


First Time Cat Owner

by stitchy



Category: IT (1990), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Derry Memory Whammy Weirdness, Eddie Lives Don't Even Worry About It, First Time, Fix-It, Fluff, Getting Together, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miniseries ONLY, Moving In Together, POV Eddie Kaspbrak, Post-Canon, Road Trips, Romance, Smut, u-hauling, virgin eddie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:49:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25595308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy
Summary: “Look, Eddie. I know you’d be a first time cat owner, but that’s nothing to worry about,” Richie says, so confidently, Eddie can’t be sure if he’s talking about the same thing he’s talking about. His brain is full of flashing alarms and sirens, he doesn’t know anymore who picked this metaphor, or if they’re actually talking about pets. “I haven’t had a cat since Watergate,” Richie laughs. “If you can imagine. But uh, I can still remember the ropes. If you wanted to get a cat together, I’d even be happy to, ya know, take the little guy to get tested, if that was what you needed...”“Oh God,” Eddie buries his face in his hands. Well, Richie’s definitely talking about what he’s talking about, at least.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 65
Kudos: 338





	First Time Cat Owner

**Author's Note:**

> You know what, Mini Richie and Eddie deserve the sexy fix-it treatment. So here it is! Eddie Kaspbrak's Hot Girl Summer. There is VERY LITTLE cat ownership to follow.

By the time they pass the county line, Eddie makes up his mind that he’s not actually headed home- not permanently. By Waterville he tells Richie as much, and by Portland they’re joking about whether they ought to have a mandatory conga line at Eddie’s _Welcome to Hollywood_ bash.

He has the mental list of everything he’ll need to grab worked out by the time they make it to the Throgs Neck Bridge. He’d like for this to be as surgical an in and out as possible. There’s a file box with all his banking and personal records, all neatly centralized in the event he needed to save it from a fire- that’s the most important, and easiest. If he’s going to turn over day-to-day control of business here in New York, some of it will need to be sorted out at the hotel tonight. Then he just needs the most summery selection of his wardrobe, some kitchen appliances that are more his than Ma’s, a few things from the bedroom and bathroom, and of course his own car, in which he, Richie, and all the aforementioned will make their overdue escape. California, here they come!

It’s after eight o’clock and Queens is unseasonably chilly when they get to the house. He’s aching from head to toe from following up their ordeal with It with the stagnation of a day’s drive, but just the prospect of perpetual sunshine and a clean break and a life that’s _all his own_ has Eddie bounding out of Richie’s rental like a kid at an amusement park.

“Be back in half an hour, Spaghetti Man!” Richie calls after him, just as gleefully. “Save some ransacking for me!”

Of course once Eddie gets inside, Ma behaves as though she’s been immobile on the floor, living off spilled Special K from under the refrigerator for three days. She ‘hasn’t slept’, and ‘all she can do is cry’, she was _so_ worried that he, her adult son, could not survive a weekend out of town! _Baloney._ Her makeup is perfect as ever, and he heard the Dyson going before he unlocked the door. Sure! She must have been really busted up that she had no one to make do nightly weigh-ins, or browbeat into a superfluous ER visit- her chief forms of entertainment. She’s probably been bored stiff!

Though she shrieks as he storms up the stairs, he barely registers it. It’s like the background noise of a fictional world on the TV. Whatever the loud bangs and commotion, it can’t affect him anymore, it’s not _real,_ because he’ll never have to return here again! He’s writing himself out. Richie will put him up for the time being, and he’s got plenty squirreled away to replace what needs replacing. He finds his file box in the bottom of his closet and folds a few garment bags over the top of it without a word to her until he gets down to the front door again. He plucks his car keys from the bowl before she can clutch them away.

“Eddie? Eddie where are you going _now?_ You just got back- it’s dark- your vision- you shouldn’t drive at night, _Eddie.”_

“I’m giving you the house,” he says, hefting the box again. “I’ll get the paperwork sorted out and sent back in a week or two.”

“Eddie, what are you saying!?” Ma’s sweater clip pops open as she clutches at her chest in shock. The one little porcelain heart dangles free. 

“You can keep living here. The house will belong to you,” he says.

_And I will not._

With that, he pushes the door open and stamps back out to the driveway. While she wavers on the stoop, too ladylike to follow him outside in her slippered feet, he gets the garage door open and loads his box and bags into the trunk of his car.

“All right. First things first,” Eddie huffs. He stands back, looking at the beginnings of his bid for freedom. All the times he’s thought about walking out, he’s never made it this far before. Sure he occasionally had a late night at work where he fantasized about starting over with just his spare uniform and his wallet, but this is purposeful. This is _happening._ He can fit at least three more things this size in here. The back seat can take his big suitcase upstairs, and there ought to be an empty box or two folded behind the Christmas things in the garage, and packing tape in the kitchen junk drawer.

By the time Richie gets back from returning the rental, Ma has got her shoes on so she can follow Eddie back and forth, pleading as he takes the blender and his coffee maker out to the car. Richie's interference gets her out of Eddie's way long enough to drag the unwieldy, unassembled boxes out from the garage without her throwing herself in his path.

“Hey Mrs. K, ‘member me?” Richie grins and flips his elbows up to give himself finger specs.

Ma looks as though rather than being dropped off by a cab, Richie just stepped off a flying saucer. She backs away from him towards the house, while Eddie wrestles the boxes through the front door. “Eddie who is this?” she panics.

“What, no love?” Richie pouts. “I really thought hauling me by the ear half way down Lisbon Street every time I gave Eddie grassy knees was as special for you as it was for me.”

“You’re from Derry,” Ma spits, realizing. “What did you _do_ to him? He went back there, and now he’s come back and he isn’t right!”

Richie steeples his fingertips evilly. “Can’t you tell?” he mutters in a shadowy, unplaceably European Voice. “Ve svitched his brains viz a monkey, that’s vy he’s going bananas!”

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “Hey Mad Doc, mind giving me a hand?”

Immediately Richie contorts and claws his fingers, clutching his own wrist as though his hand’s possessed, hellbent on obeying Eddie’s will. He follows it like it’s dragging him up the stoop to the door. “Sorry Mrs. K, gotta run!”

Eddie leads him through to the kitchen and dumps his armful, trapping the stack of boxes between his knee and the cabinets. He throws open the junk draw, plucks out the packing tape, and tosses it to Richie.

“Build one of these and then head upstairs, there’s a bathroom on the right. That’s mine. Take everything loose that isn't a cleaner,” Eddie instructs. Then he pauses. “On second thought- put in the cleaners too, I don’t know what brands you have out there...” He’ll have to adjust, but at least he’ll have a stash of the scrubby sponges he likes best.

Richie chuckles and rips some tape. “Buddy, I got Pledge. We don’t have to drive through the 110 degree desert with _every_ flammable can under the sun.”

“All right, then. Just assume intelligently,” Eddie smirks back.

“Make an Ass outta U and Me, gotcha.”

Eddie makes another box to stuff with clothes and then follows Richie up the stairs. “And don’t forget my Sassoon, it’s in a rack on the wall,” he calls after him, ducking into a different door.

“I wouldn’t _dream_ of it!” Richie hollers back.

He can depend on Richie, Eddie knows. They’ll be out of here in no time. He’s just got to grab Dad’s old photo album, his whole sock drawer, and as many shirts as this box will fit. Maybe a few paperbacks from his To Read pile of books. He’s got one of Bill’s in there- isn’t that funny?

Ma catches back up to him while he’s piling in button downs. She shields the top of the open box with her hands. “You can’t leave, Eddie. You can't take care of yourself!”

Eddie drags the box away from her. “Yes, I _can.”_

“Look at you!” Ma’s voice warbles as she watches him cross the room back and forth to get another armful of clothes. “You went away three days and came home limping!”

He stops short, pausing on his admittedly sprained ankle- but he doesn’t feel weak. He feels like iron. He stands straight and unbending as she tries to move him to sit down on the bed. “Only because I _could’ve_ died, and I didn’t,” Eddie tells her. “So now I’m gonna live- as far away from you and your sickness as I can!”

Eddie wrenches his arm free from her grasp and folds the rest of the shirts into his box. Before picking it up, he crams his special pillow under his arm. That’s everything in here. 

“Richie! You ready?”

He can hear the rattle and pop of the few pill bottles he didn’t bring to Derry finding their way into the bathroom box. “I'm ready, ready, ready to a rock 'n' roll!” Richie answers.

Without looking at Ma again, Eddie takes his things to meet Richie in the hallway. She tries to follow, like a yippy little dog snapping at his heels. “Eddie you’re not thinking clearly. I don’t know what happened to you-”

Richie steps between them as a buffer. “Après vous,” he bows his head, allowing Eddie down the stairs first. He takes his sweet time coming down, swinging his box from side to side to check his every step and block her, yet again. “Oh! Gee! Wowza! You gotta lot of stairs, Spaghetti Man. Say, did you ever slide down the bannister?”

“You oaf!”

“Now, now, there’s no need to rush, Mrs. K...”

Eddie heads straight out the door of his house for the last time and doesn’t look back until he’s put his box in the car. He waits for Richie who’s still holding up Ma with his exaggerated lack of coordination, so Eddie could get away. God, he could just kiss him.

Right away, Richie had been the one to help Eddie out of It’s lair, offering to carry him when he couldn’t move, and now he’s come to Eddie’s rescue again. He didn’t bat an eyelash when Eddie said he’d rather go anywhere than home. _Why don’t you come back with me?_ No hedging, no hesitation. He just grinned at Eddie like he’d already said yes, then laughed at how quickly he did.

_We’ll be two peas in a pod! Well. Not quite a pod, my place is huge. You could get your own phone line and we’ll call each other from opposite ends! Cshh! Whatcha say, Spaghetti? Meet me for a nightcap? My place or yours?_

That made Eddie simmer, all right. The idea of just the two of them, having a quiet night in- or just as quiet as any time with Richie can be, anyway. He’d forgotten for so long how much he loved to have Richie drive him up a wall, teasing and talking faster than the speed of light. He loved when Richie picked on him and made him special, whatever he claimed before. He wants more than anything to be caught in the center of his whirlwind again- like he’s the middle of Richie’s universe. Eddie doesn’t mind being the butt of his jokes- that way he’s always in mind, always in his arms.

Eddie face flushes hot when Richie flashes a wolfish grin at him, coming around to the garage.

 _Steamed_ peas in a pod, is more like it.

“You started the getaway car,” Richie notes with a mischievous glint.

“Just waiting on my partner in crime.”  
  
Of course Ma is not far behind. She reaches them before Richie can stash his box in the car, tears streaming down her face.

“You’re not going!”

“I have to,” Eddie insists, dodging her grip. He’s not completely immune to her waterworks, however. He doesn’t just turn away and get in the car like he ought to.

“Where? Where are you going? You at least- you _have_ to tell your mother, Eddie! You owe me that!”

He knows now, that after the forty years of the damage she’s done, he doesn’t owe her jack. Still. _“California,”_ he snaps back. That’ll tell her just how far he’s willing to go to get away.

Ma makes a choked sound of disgust. “You won’t make it out there. It’s too different. You’re a simple boy and they’ll just confuse you. All those filthy, sinful people! You know what kinds they have out there...”

As one of those so-called filthy people, Richie looks like he’s really enjoying this. He stops and elbows Eddie, still holding his box. “Hey Eddie, wanna join my cult? All you gotta go is chug a pint of blood and you’re in.”

“It’ll _kill_ you, Eddie!” Ma sobs. “They’ll make you sick like them! Like _him!”_ she points at Richie.

That’s as much as Eddie is willing to take. He grabs the edge of Richie’s box, at first to push him along to the car, but then he sees the collection of pill bottles at the top. Without thinking he starts pulling them out and popping off their caps, one by one.

“They’re not sick,” he says, spilling the capsules to the pavement. _“I’m_ not sick.” Another bottle. “You are! I know what you’ve done to me, my whole life. You’re the one who made me think I was nothing. That I couldn’t have a life except for _you,_ and you made sure of it, with these!”

Red, white, yellow, and green pills roll across the ground, bouncing around Ma’s feet. She steps back. “Eddie, you’re just upset!”

 _“You’re goddamned right!”_ The last bottle on top of a layer of towel is a tube of sunblock. He throws that on the ground, too. “I’m not gonna stand for it anymore, Ma, I’m gonna do whatever I want, and you can't tell me not to! I’ll go to California and I’ll go out in the sun! Smell the flowers every day!” He laughs, a touch maniacally. It’s so simple and so stupid, but he laughs. Ma never liked him to tempt a sunburn, or his allergies, or getting too overheated. Just the idea of him enjoying a little scenery was antithetical to the sterility she’d forced on him, all this time. “And I’ll eat sushi!” Eddie goes on to declare, relishing her horrified look. “And I’ll get a cat, and go out and train for marathons like I always wanted, and- and _have sex with a man,_ if I like!”’

With that, Eddie stomps on the bottle of sunblock, making it bust open and ooze all the way to the toes of Ma’s shoes. She recoils. “Whuh- _why would you say something like that!?”_ she cries.

Good question. Eddie clears his throat, rough from getting carried away, shouting. “Uh-”

Richie catches his panicked glance as he turns back from finally shoving the last box into the car. He’s nothing if not an improviser, so he moves easily, hooking an arm around Eddie’s waist. “‘Cause we’re in love, you old bat! Up yours!”

In a flash, he whisks Eddie to the open passenger seat and shuts the door. Eddie just sits there, as stunned as his mother in the driveway, while Richie jogs around to the driver’s. He hurdles in and hits the auto-lock.

“Yeehaw, Spaghetti, let’s hit the trail!”

“Richie-”

He stops his attempt to grab hold of the seat belt, behind him. “Oh, did you wanna drive?” he asks. “We can just get outta here first and then switch. Not that the hotel’s all that far, right? You said it was another exit-“

“No, no, you can drive,” Eddie babbles. “That’s- that’s fine...”

He turns to look out the window as they back out, and his mother is still there grim and statuelike. He watches until her pale, agonized face disappears in the darkness for the last time. The poisonous look she gave him... They’re going only as far as Manhasset tonight, but as far as she’s concerned, he’s gone forever. 

That’s just fine.

They head out of the neighborhood and get to a main road again, that will hook up with the highway, and finally Eddie refocuses. He’s not alone after all. Richie is whiteknuckling the steering wheel, staring dead ahead out the windshield, unblinking.

“Uhm, what I said,” Eddie starts, tentatively. His hands keep tumbling in knots in his lap. “About what I want. Uh, if that changes things... I’d understand if you didn’t want me to- to live with you.” He chances a quick glance at Richie, whose expression remains hyper focused on the road.

“I'm not gonna kick you out because you want, uh, _to have a cat,”_ he says, tight.

If Eddie could feel any of his extremities he might roll down the window for some air, he feels like he can’t breathe. Is his inhaler in the back seat or did he throw it in the trunk?

“Richie, I was just... saying things. Like- like that I want to get a cat. Obviously-”

Richie nods enthusiastically, and doesn’t really stop. “Oh, yeah. I mean! If you _prefer_ cats to dogs!”

“I mean! I’ll be... staying with you. So if you minded... I wouldn’t... Well, I wouldn’t even know what to _do_ with a...”

Here’s the ramp. They’re getting on the highway now, maybe they’ll merge with an eighteen wheeler and Eddie’ll be put out of his misery.

Richie hits the blinker. “I’m not _not_ a cat person...”

“No?” Eddie tries not to squeak.

“Look, Eddie. I know you’d be a first time cat owner, but that’s nothing to worry about,” Richie says, so confidently, Eddie can’t be sure if he’s talking about the same thing he’s talking about. His brain is full of flashing alarms and sirens, he doesn’t know anymore who picked this metaphor, or if they’re _actually_ talking about pets. “I haven’t had a cat since Watergate,” Richie laughs. “If you can imagine. But uh, I can still remember the ropes. If you wanted to get a cat _together_ , I’d even be happy to, ya know, take the little guy to get tested, if that was what you needed...”

“Oh God,” Eddie buries his face in his hands. Well, Richie’s definitely talking about what he’s talking about, at least. “That’s not... _Since Watergate?”_

“Yeah! I considered myself a dog person til then, so believe me, I was surprised that’s what I was going for! But maybe not _so_ surprised now, in hindsight...” Richie gives him a sidelong look. “Cute little blond, I mean _yellow..._ yellow, uh... _cat.”_

“Richie, please-”

He clears his throat. “Beep beep?”

Eddie groans. “Until we get to the hotel, please.”

“But just to be clear before we get there-”

_“We’re talking about us sleeping together, yes!”_

Richie snorts. “I was just gonna ask if they have a No Pets policy?”

 _“Richie!”_ Eddie could spontaneously combust.

“Whatever you say!”

He keeps his word, or _no words_ for the short amount of time it takes to get back off the highway and pull up to the Travelodge. They stop in the parking spot for new check ins, and it occurs to Eddie he’d rather figure out what the deal is before they get up to the counter, where there will be an unwitting third party to his impending breakdown. He unbuckles as slowly as possible to buy them just a moment longer in the car.

“Are we-”

“-How do you wanna do this?” Richie asks.

Eddie balks. “I didn’t think _that_ far, I- I don’t know? I never- I guess it depends on who can-”

The whites of Richie’s eyes expand. “One room, or-?”

 _Of course,_ that’s what he meant. “Two!” Eddie blurts, needing an ounce of deniability. “I’ll buy, this time.”

“But you paid for gas!” Richie objects.

“You extended your rental, and- and _everything_ to drive me down,” Eddie counters. Richie had his own obligations he walked out on to go to Derry, and now instead of flying home, he’s taking extra time to keep Eddie company. “That was- that was uhm, sweet of you.”

Richie beams back at him. “Naww, that was my pleasure-”

“Please, I insist. You’ll get your chance.”

“Alright, alright.” Richie takes his hands off the wheel, held up in surrender. They’ve got thousands of miles to go, after all. There will be other travel expenses. “I’ll wait here for ya.”

Eddie welcomes the opportunity to reassemble his wits, Richie-free. He waits for the lady at the front desk to charge his card and thinks of nothing but where it was that he heard this song playing before. Maybe in that commercial for the CD of ‘summer songs’? He only recognizes the one snatch of it. Who is this? It’s pretty good. If he can remember a bit of it to repeat back, he’s sure Richie will know. Oh _hell._

He gets back in the car with room keys clutched in his increasingly clammy hand. “Twenty-two and twenty-three, around back,” he tells Richie.

“Aye-aye, Cap’n.”

It’s emptier and darker on the back half of the building, and there’s a parking spot perfectly between their two doors. Richie pops the trunk and meets him outside.

“I shouldn’t have put the file box behind all this,” Eddie sighs, shoving a blender out of the way.

Richie shoulders his own bag and then pulls another box out of the way, making Eddie’s target easier to free. “What? You gonna do some late night tax prep?”

“Yeah, actually. I need to pull out a bunch of documents for the guy I’m gonna have run things here,” Eddie explains. “There was a copy machine in the lobby. We’ll have to put them in his mailbox on our way out of New York, or I dunno. Maybe I’ll run it over tonight.” Eddie gets everything he wants from the trunk into his arms and shuts it again. He looks up at Richie, twisting the leather strap slung over his shoulder and looking decidedly crestfallen.

“I guess this is sign off time, then.”

“Oh!” Eddie’s heart throbs. “Yeah I guess this is goodnight.” He just sort of shot himself in the foot, if he was hoping to clear anything else up before they part ways. And he was on such a roll. Eddie hoists his box. “Better get started on these so I can turn in. Get some rest before tomorrow.”

Richie bites his lip and nods. “What time do you wanna get outta here?”  
  
“By six, at least,” Eddie sighs. “You don’t want to get caught in the city during rush hour.” He turns abruptly and squeezes between his and another car to get to their doors, but once he gets there, his hands are too full to get his key in the lock.

“I got it,” Richie swoops in. He gets the door open and holds it for him, with a servile bow.

“Real white glove treatment,” Eddie notes, passing through. “Don’t tell me you’re expecting a tip.”

“And don’t forget the valet parking!” Richie lets the door fall shut and stands, waiting for Eddie to put his things down. His fingers fix in the international gesture for _Money Please._

Eddie grins. “You looking for a new job? I’ll be needing people for the west coast branch when we get to LA.”

The bag on Richie’s shoulder slides to the floor with a soft thump, and he shakes his head fondly. “You’re incredible, you know that?”

“Me?”

“Nah, the guy who curbed two monsters in one weekend that’s standing _behind_ you,” Richie smiles. “And for your next trick, you’re gonna start all over from scratch with your business, too. You’re amazing, Eddie. You amaze me.”

Eddie still has assets and contacts and plenty of industry know-how, but he keeps that to himself. If Richie thinks he’s amazing, then he’s not about to argue. Not when he’s got such an admiring, yearning look in his eye. He thought he’d accidentally shaken him off, but he should know better just how tenacious that man can be. As smooth as shadow, Richie crosses the floor towards him, and there’s no denying the way Eddie’s breath hitches, expectantly. He shuffles a step closer.

“That’s all just doing what I had to do,” he tells Richie.

And now he has to do this. Better yet, he _wants_ to, and he wants it to be with Richie, who stood by his side for every other insane, overdue thing he’s just done. His hands land on Richie’s chest as he finally comes close enough to touch and like the other impossible things they’ve conquered together it's so _right,_ he almost doesn't have to be brave. He throws his arms around Richie’s neck and kisses him like he wanted to before, maybe a thousand times. Richie’s spitfire mouth is just as hot as he always expected, always _hoped_ as it opens to his own, though not so prickly. The tickle of his mustache is entirely pleasant, and well groomed, and he smells like a _man._ Eddie’s kissing a _man,_ a man he’s been been in love with since before he could ever imagine such an outlandish thing, and he’s wrapping his strong arms around Eddie’s back to pull him in close against his broad, solid body and-

“Agh!” Eddie seizes in pain.

Just as suddenly, Richie lets go of him. “Hey, woah!” He searches Eddie with worried eyes.

“It’s- it’s my back,” Eddie hisses. “Man alive, oww!” He hadn’t focused on it when they were cruising on adrenaline, sitting in the cushy seat of the car all the way down from Maine, but he’s pretty banged up. Too tender to be gripped into with eager hands, certainly.

“Shit, I’m sorry-” Richie steps back to give Eddie room to double over as he winces. “Have you taken anything for it, buddy?”

Eddie nods, teeth clenched. He rubs his flanks where It’s claw had clamped him, trying to soothe the ache. He’d finished a bottle of painkillers and changed his clothes as soon as he had the chance to back in Derry, but that was almost a day ago. He’d still been mostly people-colored then with a few angry red welts, and just grateful he hadn’t broken the skin or any bones. He’s not so sure he wants to see the mess it is now, but he untucks his shirt anyway, and twists for Richie to take a look.

“Is it awful?”

Richie clucks his tongue. “Oh, darlin’.” His hand grazes Eddie’s hip gently. He turns him around slowly, surveying his bruises. “That’s gotta hurt. How’d you sleep on it last night?”

“I didn't, I slept on my stomach,” Eddie admits.

Richie finishes revolving him, so they’re standing face to face again, his expression much more dour than when he took him into his arms, just moments ago. Eddie can feel the magic slipping away as he lowers his shirt again. This isn’t the way he wanted Richie to touch him. No way he’ll want to get things back on track, if he thinks he’ll hurt him.

“Should we have taken you to the hospital?” Richie frowns.

“I would’ve stayed with Ma, if I wanted that,” Eddie huffs. “There should be some Advil in the car with the bathroom things-”

 _“Well,_ there used to be...”

“Shoot, I just cleaned out my glove box, and it’s too late to go to Genovese...”

“Should’ve thought of that before you sprinkled the driveway like a cookie,” Richie points out.

Eddie sighs and gives his ribs another rub. “I’m gonna be sorry in the morning.”

“Aww, Spaghetti Man.”

 _Worth it,_ Eddie thinks as Richie draws him close by the shoulders to kiss the worried wrinkle out of his forehead.

“Tell you what,” says Richie. “You dig out your files, and I’ll go fill some bags with ice for ya. That’ll help tonight, and then we’ll make a drug store run in the morning.”

Eddie glances over his shoulder at the box on the corner of his bed. “Right. But, Richie-”

He’s already picking up his bag and jingling his pocket for his own room key. “Back in a jiff!”

  
  


-

  
  


Eddie’s eye pries open to the red numbers on the alarm clock. 5:08.

He gropes around for the edge of the bed, so he can pull himself to it and slither over, rather than push up on his arms and arch his back. His spine’s all out of whack. He doesn’t usually sleep like this. As he moves, a dense weight rolls off of him and touches the sliver of bare skin where his shirt rode up in the night. It’s cold and wet, and his shirt is wet too.

“Ugh.”

Once his feet are on the floor, Eddie peels his shirt overhead and chucks it on the bed. The bathroom is in the opposite direction from where he’s used to, so he stumbles through the dark, playing bumper cars with the unfamiliar walls. He flicks on the light when he finally finds the door and squints through the glare at an even more unsettling sight. His whole body is looks like he got in a fight with a jar of indigo ink, with blue and purple stains creeping from his sides to his stomach. Of his torso, only the top of his chest and a thin strip of abdomen remain his natural, pale color- and even then there’s a splash of darkness creeping over the back of his left shoulder.

What the hell happened to him?

Eddie twists in the mirror, and his back is so much worse than his front. He shivers at the sight of his own injury.

After using the bathroom, he leaves the light on to find a new shirt from his luggage- which it looks like he didn’t bother to bring in. There’s only his big box of papers on the little desk, next to the contents of his pockets and his slacks folded over the chair. Did he leave it in the car?

When Eddie goes to pick up his wet shirt so he can put it back on and check, he uncovers a half-melted bag of ice.

“Richie...”

Richie had brought him the ice. He took the papers Eddie pulled out of the box and offered to go make copies and tucked him into bed and set him up with an ice pack for his back, because Eddie threw away all his pills. Because he left Ma. Because he went back to Derry and finally faced his demons and _how could he possibly forget that?_ It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since he and Richie left and already the memory of all of it, of _It,_ is drifting away like it did before.

“No, no, no not again,” Eddie mutters in a panic.

He grabs his keys from the desk, but leaves his shirt and his slacks, never mind taking the time to locate his shoes! Eddie bolts out the door of his room to the sidewalk in his shorts, and rounds to Richie’s door, hammering it with his whole fist.

What if Richie woke up and he didn’t know why he was here? What if he already checked out?

“Open up, Richie! Richie! Please, it’s me!”

He doesn’t let up until finally, on the other side, Eddie hears a grumble and the metallic slide of the lock. Richie stands back in the open door, face scrunched behind some familiarly thick glasses. He looks sleep-mussed and bewildered, but he’s still here, thank God.

“Eddie?”

“It’s happening again!” Eddie rushes, pushing his way past Richie, into his room. “We’re forgetting!”

Richie wavers sleepily on the spot. “Forgetting what?”

Even if he just woke up, Eddie can’t believe how clueless Richie is. He waves his hands at his battered self, exasperated. “Look at me! How’d I wind up like this!?”

“In my room in your underwear? I dunno, I didn’t read your Dear Penthouse. _I never thought it would happen to me...”_

Eddie rolls his eyes. “No!”

Richie grins and adjusts his glasses. “Oh, you mean the groovy tie-dye look you got going on. Right on. You musta got hurt while... Huh.” He stops. His face drops. “I wanna say there was a lobster claw involved but that can’t be right...”

“Richie, think.” Eddie comes right up to him, urgently touching his shoulder. 

They can both forget It, for all he cares, but it can’t be like before where they left Derry and lost each other. The deaths were terrible, yes, but the lives stolen were crueler yet. Their friendships and truths they learned as children should have been indelible, carrying them all into adulthood. Eddie had glimpses of the Lucky Seven in the intervening years, but how could he know them when he could hardly recognize himself?

“Do you remember last night, at least?” he pleads with Richie. Eddie can’t lose him, above all. He can’t go back to them being strangers, not when they’re finally on the brink of having each other so completely. He stares up at Richie, willing him to know what he’s thinking like when they used to play Mesmo the Mind Reader as kids. “It was a joke,” Eddie insists. “-But you said- you said we were _in love,_ and- and you kissed me?”

With no change in expression, Richie shakes his head. “No.”

“No?!” Eddie goes numb.

“It wasn’t a joke," Richie smirks. “And _you_ kissed me. I’m a little fuzzy on the origins of your watercolor collection, but _that_ I know.”

“Oh, thank God.”

Feeling rushes back to his face just in time to press Richie with another kiss. He really had him going there, for a minute. Eddie sighs in relief as Richie carefully slides his hands up his neck to take hold and kiss him back. As their lips blend, he can only hope that if they do this enough they’ll become so muddled, it will be impossible to separate them again. Richie seems to be of the same mind, threading his fingers into Eddie’s hair and keeping on kissing him deeply, over and over, until he whimpers.

“Richie...” Eddie scrambles at him, trying to get the rest of them sealed as close together.

He feels like he could crawl out of his skin and into Richie’s, or at the very least share his clothes like a cocoon. _Could_ he burrow up Richie’s shirt and bind them together like buddy-taped fingers? He wants them stuck together, moving as one. He wants to feel the jut of Richie’s bones against his and the pull of his muscles and bend with him, head to head, toe to curling toe. The discovery of every new inch of him that Eddie’s never put his hands on before is like fire in his brain, but he wants to map him out with his eyes and mouth and body, too. He’s never, ever been turned on by someone else outside of the abstract before. This isn’t his usual lonely, begrudging answer to biology. This is real, and longed for, and best of all- _mutual._ He can feel the heat building and the weight of their bodies as they sway in their embrace, and he wants _more._ He tries to lean them toward the bed, but no matter where he squeezes or how he turns Richie, he doesn’t budge any closer or venture his own hands.

“Won’t you touch me?” Eddie pants, pressing against him.

Richie groans. “You could make a good dog break his leash." Even as he relaxes his grip at Eddie’s neck to pause, he doesn’t touch any lower than the shoulder. “I know it’s blasphemy that a self proclaimed hornball like me won’t throw you down on the bed. Believe me baby, _I wanna...”_ Richie flicks his eyes up and down Eddie, such as he is. 

“I’m- it’s not as bad as it looks!” Eddie tries to reason. “We could be careful. I could take an over-the-counter and be _fine.”_

“It’s not just that, tough guy,” Richie chuckles. “You’re too special to hurry.”

“No part of being forty and only just now having my first _anything_ with another man feels like a hurry,” Eddie glares.

Richie hangs back and strokes Eddie’s cheek. “You shouldn’t be getting squeezed in at a motel before rush hour, Eddie,” he says. “You’re getting sonnets and champagne and a flock of doves, if I have anything to say about it! _Roses,_ at the very least.” He dips to kiss Eddie once more in promise.

Eddie licks his lip, after, still singing with the heat of it. “I don’t like roses.”

“Allergic?”

“Hell if I know,” Eddie laughs. The decoding of his true medical history is a matter for another day. “They’re just sorta plain,” he shrugs. If Eddie ever liked plain he might have settled a long time ago. “I like big, gaudy flowers,” he grins at Richie.

“I might have known...” Richie winks. “See, if you hold your horses I’ll have the time to do a little recon and _really_ charm the pants off you.”

Eddie shifts his footing, suddenly conscious that he didn’t give Richie that chance at all, showing up like he did. As eager as he is to shed the last of his inhibitions, he does want Richie to romance him. There’s nothing better than having the undivided, lingering attention of the most attention-seeking guy around, after all.

“You’re right,” Eddie agrees. “Let’s not rush.”

  
  


-

  
  


They were hoping that after the big lunch they had, they might make it all the way to Indianapolis for a late dinner, but halfway through Ohio, Eddie’s having a hard time. The Advil he took with lunch is wearing off and his back is throbbing, even with one of his sweaters rolled up in his lumbar for extra support. Richie makes him pull over when he fails to crack a smile at his observation of Pennsylvania license plate G3N1UO5's use of the fastlane.

He circles around the car to give Eddie a hand out of his seat, once they’re in their selected restaurant’s parking lot. “Sir,” he holds out his hand. “Welcome to Reynoldsburg, I have been appointed your guide by the local board of tourism. If you’ll look to your left you’ll see the backside of a billboard graffitied with a truly haunting Kilroy, and to your right- a world class establishment that boasts both an all day breakfast menu _and_ a tequila bar!”

Eddie eases on up, aided by Richie’s arm and the potential of drowning his sorrows in a pot of tea. “This is embarrassing,” he grits. “You know, I’m supposed to be a professional driver.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.”

It’s good to get out of the car for a while and sit in a chair he doesn’t have to make as much bodily contact with while he recovers a bit. He sits with his chin perched on his folded hands and lets Richie mastermind the menu. As long as he has his Earl Grey and a ticket to the one man show, he’s smiling.

After they eat he takes a lap around the restaurant while Richie waits for the bill, and comes back to an unexpected schmoozer.

“I never would have expected to see you at El Gallo! Wow,” gushes a stringy looking man in a neon green shirt. Eddie has to avert his eyes as he sits down again. _“Maybe_ at Grand’s, I mean- their dessert’s better. But here is great if you want fried ice cream! Only place for that...”

“Sounds like we shoulda called ahead for your recommendation-?” Richie hangs a hand in the air, waiting for a name.

“David!” he introduces himself. They shake.

“Great to meet you, David. What do you in your wisdom advise for a last call at this joint?” Richie asks. When he gets his hand back from David’s over enthused grip he thumbs at Eddie. “It’s been a loooong day and my buddy here is done driving for the night.”

“Oh, I couldn't have a drink,” Eddie demures. “I’ll fall asleep in the car.”

Richie twitches a pouty little pucker at him. “I can still tuck you in if you want, baby, we got towels in the trunk. And you _know_ I’ll be singing you lullabies whether you want them or not.”

Eddie blushes and sips the cold dregs of his tea, burying his apprehension in the cup. Can Richie just _say_ that? He all but promised to kiss him goodnight in front of a stranger! Whatever David recommends, Eddie doesn’t hear it while he’s busy obsessing internally. Richie wraps up the interaction and excuses himself to the bathroom, and then Eddie’s spiked horchata nightcap comes and it’s _delicious,_ so he forgets to mention it until they’re getting back in the car.

Richie opens the passenger side door for him and folds his arm along the top like one of Boticelli’s cherubs. He admires Eddie as he checks his disheveled reflection in the visor mirror.

“Hey gorgeous, when you’re driving people around, do clients ever get confused who’s the real glamorpuss and try to wait on you?”

“Certainly not after eleven hours on the road.” Eddie blots his forehead with his hanky. That last drink was spicy enough to give him a shine.

Richie chuckles. “Can I get you anything, baby? A mint? A foot bath?”

Eddie whips around to look at Richie, remembering. “You called me that in front of him.”

He shrugs it off. “Everyone in Hollywood calls everyone else ‘baby’, baby!”

“Still.”

“If you don’t like it, I’ll stop.”

Eddie levels Richie with a knowing look. “I could never get you to quit calling me anything.”

Richie casts his eyes up innocently and then shuts the door. While he comes around, Eddie leans over to unlock the door for him, then sits back, hand still trailing on the center console. When Richie gets in, he covers it on top of the stick shift. His thumb rubs across Eddie’s knuckles.

“You don’t have to worry what people will say, you know, Eddie.”

Eddie tuts. People have been saying he’s a sissy all his life, that’s not likely to change and neither is his prickly reaction. “Don’t you, though?”

“Eh, you’d be surprised what you can get away with when you’ve spent a few decades establishing your eccentricity.” Richie starts the car and gets them going.

“Whether they say anything or not, people will notice, though, won’t they?” Eddie asks. “If we take up together?”

Richie raises a finger off the steering wheel. “First of all, there’s no _‘if’,"_ he says. “You’re coming home with me, and I’m gonna treat you like a prince and love up on you so much, you’re gonna need a hip replacement by fifty. Secondly-”

“Fifty!?”  
  
“Maybe Forty-five? Depends,” Richie grins. _“Secondly,_ ” he keeps bulldozing on, “Rich single guys have people crashing with them all the time! You can pretty much rate how good an LA house party was by how many squatters are still hanging around a week later. Really, no self respecting comedian should live without at least one permanent house guest to bounce off of. It’s good for the material! You’d be doing me a favor.”

That makes Eddie giggle. Or maybe the muzzy aftereffect of his drink does. “Well, if it’ll _help_ your career...”

“That’s the spirit. See, I don’t know why everybody in the biz doesn’t take a gay lover to get _ahead.”_

“Oh, you’re awful,” Eddie laughs.

“And you’re not,” Richie says easily. “So don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”

It's gonna be hard to bum Eddie out for the next decade, honestly. Richie just called him his _lover._ Eddie cuddles down into his seat, smiling. 

As predicted, by the time they get to Indianapolis he’s too sleepy to overthink whatever Richie decides about the hotel. They get one room and one bed, though Richie insists on setting some gentlemanly ground rules, namely- a cap on how many kisses are allowed _in_ the bed.

While Eddie brushes his teeth Richie takes his contacts out, leaning close to the mirror with laserlike focus that’s hard to argue with. “You’re probably still bellyflopping anyway, right?”

Eddie nods affirmatively as he brushes. That’s one word for the way his insides feel, contemplating sharing a bed with a lover for the first time. It is better they agreed to ease into it, he thinks. When he’s so overcome by nerves that he passes out, at least it won’t be a disappointment.

Richie rubs his contact lense clean between his fingers. “I’ll get you some ice, in a minute. Want anything from the vending machines?”

“Paff uff guh?” Eddie froths. He runs the sink so he can spit and clarify, but Richie darts in to rinse off his eye solution first. Before he leans away again he noses into Eddie’s neck and wraps a careful arm around him from behind. An embarrassingly high pitched noise escapes Eddie along with a few minty flecks.

Not only has Richie decoded his request for chewing gum, he has a jingle locked and loaded. _“_ _So kiss a little longer, laugh a little longer, stay close a little longer, longer with Big Red!”_

Eddie forgets what he was doing, watching Richie rock him gently in the mirror. “Fubblemiff, pleeff, iff they haff if...”

“Of course,” Richie kisses, and leaves him to his routine.

Eddie leaves the light on for when Richie gets back, but otherwise, he is D-O-N-E. It’s close to midnight when he finally pulls down the covers and climbs into the bed. He experiments with rolling onto his side, and he’s so exhausted and just medicated enough that it’s bearable for a bit, even if he won’t fall asleep like this.

Richie comes back and pulls a _Woops, there’s already someone in here!_ gag retreat, then comes through the door again. “Hey wait a minute, this _is_ my room! They told me the last guy already checked out!”

Eddie smiles and stretches. “Just give me... six or seven hours and I’ll be outta your way.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what Goldilocks said, too,” Richie growls back.

He tosses his armful of ice down on the bed to empty his pockets and shuck his shoes and pants. When he hits the light, the yellow of the Steel City tee he picked up at lunch beams in the dark. He comes over to the bed and shimmies in, closer and closer until the ice jostles in the narrow valley between their blanketed legs. Like many a landscape that’s passed before them today, the approaching peaks of Richie and the closing vastness makes Eddie feel glad to be alive.

“Boy, if you think you’re nervous, you should feel how cold my hands are,” Richie teases. He lays his still icy palm at Eddie’s cheek and then tucks back the wave of hair that flops down into his face.

“Mmm.” Eddie folds his hand over Richie’s to warm it and rubs. “Less and less nervous, about this.”

For all the fuss Eddie makes anticipating it, Richie’s touch has an eye of the hurricane calm to it when it arrives. He keeps pulling himself up against Eddie until they’re flush from belly to knee. As they kiss, he traces his hand back around his shoulder, encouraging him to lean in a little more. By the third kiss, Eddie is half on top of him and starting to ache in a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant ways. Still, he likes a bargain.

“You sure you can’t go as high as ten?” he tries to convince Richie.

He ghosts his mouth under Eddie’s jaw, breathing hot down his throat. “That’s double what we said.”

“But it wouldn’t count if it’s not on the face...”

Richie drags a wet lip at him and mouths at Eddie’s jugular. “That’s a freebie,” he claims, and repeats himself. “This is not a kiss.” Again and again. “It’s a bite. Like a sample. On a toothpick.”

He can justify his _Supermarket Sweep_ however he likes, it makes the little hairs all down Eddie’s spine stand on end.

When he’s got his bonus five, Eddie dives back in to kiss Richie properly once more. The taste of his own aftershave is on Richie’s tongue as they mingle. He licks out, sloppily, activating whatever Richie uses to keep his whiskers soft and he desperately loves the smell of them, mixing.

“Last one, buddy,” Richie warns in a whisper. His lips are parted and waiting, but lets Eddie pick his moment.

“What if I get out of bed and then come back?” Eddie smirks. “Does the counter reset?”

In answer, Richie uses the arm currently around Eddie’s shoulder to haul him fully on top of his body. He locks his wrists together around Eddie’s shoulders and narrows his eyes at him. “Make it count.”

This kiss comes all the way from Eddie’s toes. He digs them into the bed to push himself up against Richie as he claims his mouth, breathing in deep through his nose to keep them sealed all the longer. Rather than chance the wreckage of his back, Richie’s hands skate down over his rear, pulling them together at the hip.

“Oh, _Richie,”_ Eddie gasps apart from him.

“Yeah, that was a dirty trick,” Richie snickers. He bumps his forehead to Eddie’s and heaves a sigh. “Come on, Spaghetti. We should be good boys and say goodnight.”

Eddie swallows his objection before he can speak it. As much as he wishes he could spend the rest of the night rolling around with Richie, he already twinges and they’re being very mindful. He’ll feel better tomorrow morning, and even better tomorrow night, on and on, until they can be thoughtless- just two bodies. 

He shuffles off to his side of the bed and lays so Richie can pack in the ice along his ribs. One of them may be broken. He’s only been a little winded and he’s not coughing up anything alarming, so he’s not about to subject himself to the ER, but he did feel a crack when-

When _what_ happened?

“Richie?”

He just laid down himself, but he tips to his side to face Eddie, alert. “You need something?”

“I forgot again...”

“Well, I can’t go pee for ya,” Richie says. “That’s a personal problem.”

It’s hard for Eddie to even remember that he can’t remember. When he tries to think about it, things just sort of... are. It’s not so bad, really. Whatever messed him up like this must have been a real bad scene, so he’s sort of grateful. Something tells him not to bother Richie by asking if he can fill in the blanks.

He’s watching out for Eddie, and that’s enough. That’s what made him so enamored with Richie in the first place. He always looked for his reaction, always saw him. He followed him around and provoked him and he liked Eddie uptight and messy equally. He wanted to be around him no matter what, trouble or no.

“No... I’m just... Hmm. I’m trying to remember... when we met.” Eddie blinks at Richie in the darkness.

Without his glasses or contacts he’s gone and shut his eyes again. “We were so young,” he yawns. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. It’s perfectly normal not to remember things from that long ago. He doesn’t remember meeting Bill the first time, either, and they went even further back. “I think I remember the first time it was just you and me, though. Without the others.”

“Lil’ Eddie, sittin’ on the curb, ‘cause Big Bill wasn’t there to walk him home.”

“It was so late before I realized he hadn’t even come to school that day, I was afraid to go home. You spotted me coming out from... some after school club or other. It was like you had a radar for me-”

“Or a crush?” Richie suggests with a smirk.

Whatever it was, he got Eddie to buck up. He made him laugh about the invisible steed he would give him a ride on, if only he could remember where he left it. They skipped and galloped all the way down Lisbon Street hee-hawing and pulling on imaginary reigns, and it hadn’t been so bad when Ma gave him a tongue-lashing, because Richie was right there, trilling his lip like a horse.

Eddie reaches across the mattress and curls one of his fingers into Richie’s. He takes a deep breath and Richie opens his eyes again and squints, ready to listen closely. “You know, sometimes I felt like my mother was trying to- to _solve_ me,” Eddie says. “Like I only existed to be a problem for her to have. Like... if she could just set me straight once and for all, I would shrink and shrink, and finally I’d be _so_ small I wouldn’t be anything at all,” he tells Richie. He turns his head a little more and flattens his pillows so he can look at him better, with both eyes. “But it’s never like that with you. You make me feel...”

“Big,” Richie says simply, and it's not untrue. It’s just not all of it.

Eddie takes more of his hand and laces their fingers together. They go together so comfortably. “You make me feel like... I can take up space. And you want me to. Like I belong.”

“You do,” Richie tells him. He drags Eddie’s hand close to his chest as if to say _Here._ He licks his lip, forming a thought. “I think I had an empty spot, just waiting for you,” he finally says. “For the longest time I just didn’t know what fit there.”

Eddie muffles a laugh into his pillow. “Like that yellow cat, huh?”

“Ah, _cats fit on a windowsill, children fit in the snow...”_

“Shh, Pippin.”

“I can’t help it, the after school club was glee club!”

Without asking if Richie will take pity and position his ice a second time (he will) or allow for an exception, Eddie moves and rolls to give Richie one last kiss. “Goodnight.”

“G’night, Eddie.”

  
  


-

  
  


_Pippin_ is nothing compared to the one man production of _Oklahoma!_ Richie puts on in the passenger seat. He can’t even wait for the state border. From the moment they see the first sign for it on the highway headed out of Missouri, it’s a foregone conclusion.

Perhaps the effect on Eddie is just as inevitable. When they’re still three hours out from their planned stop in Texas, Eddie spots a sign for a Super 8.

“Why don’t we stop here?” he suggests.

Richie stops humming and crosses his arms petulantly. “Had enough, have you?”

“Never,” Eddie smiles. But one can only be serenaded by so many love songs before wanting to do something about it. He’ll have a better shot at getting Richie to double his allowance if he still has some wind in his sails. “I was just thinking that if we left from _here_ tomorrow morning, we’d get to stop in Las Vegas tomorrow night. Then from there, you’d still make lunch with your agent.”

Richie hardly has to think about it. “Well, Ah _cain’t_ say no to that,” he twangs.

  
  


-

  
  


Eddie chose their accommodations in Oklahoma, so Richie gets to pick for Vegas, and wouldn’t you know? He points to the tallest building on the skyline and that’s that, decision made. Fitzgerald’s it is.

It’s been a week since Eddie left New York for Derry. It’s been so many miles since then, he can’t remember exactly why he decided to go anymore. Supposedly there was a class reunion, but he never did make it to the party. Doesn’t matter. He ran into Richie again.

Richie, who took him thousands of miles across the country, and now dozens of floors up into the air, where a glittering city spills below them like they’re dancing on starlight. He twirls Eddie into the corner where the windows meet and they can be surrounded only by each other and sparkling night. They kiss and sway there for as long as they can stand to be on their feet. They’re tired, and neither of them has had so much as an hour of solitude since they took off together, but it doesn’t matter. Eddie would happily have this night with him last forever. He’s on the mend. His bruises are breaking up, purple spots edged in rings of yellow like the top of a blackberry brûlée, Richie says. In the dark, they’re only half there. In the cushion of the bed, they barely matter.

Eddie hasn’t laid on his back in an eternity, never mind being freshly showered with an equally shirtless Richie climbing up his body. _Freckles._ He has freckles and Eddie is going to touch them all! This is going to be a wonderful night.

“Oh _God_ that feels good,” he moans. 

Richie chuckles and lowers himself to his elbows on either side of Eddie’s head. “And I haven’t even kissed you yet, this is gonna be _easy.”_

Eddie stops Richie a breath away with a finger on his nose. “Double or nothing, what do you say?”

“You’re a real high roller, Spaghetti Man. One hour in Vegas, you’re already slingin’ the lingo!”

Eddie laughs into the kiss Richie sneaks past his finger. “That’s double, then!”

“Twenty? I can’t count that high.”

Two, three, four...

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Eddie hums into another kiss

“This is why they say the house always wins.”

Six, seven, _still_ seven, _lucky seven..._

Eddie’s not sure why that sticks in his brain as something interesting for a moment, but then it evaporates. He loses count after that anyway, unsure of where some of the kisses begin and end. The only number that really matters is the two of them.

Richie tests how he’s healing with keen hands and finds the perfect spot to hold Eddie as he wriggles beneath him. Eddie skims his fingers down Richie’s back, expecting him to throw the brakes before he can go any lower, but he doesn’t. He inches his way under the band of his shorts as far as he can reach and grips. It makes Richie jerk against him and squeeze back, flesh for flesh.

“Mmnn,” Richie pulls back to check on him. “Did that- was that too hard?”

“No, no.” It was far enough down Eddie’s body not to matter either way. To show he’s all right, he mirrors Richie, rutting up against him as he grips again. “Is this okay?”

“Hmm, I dunno, try it again so I can decide,” Richie grins and kisses him, still grinning.

It’s _very_ okay, on repeat. They fall into a hurried give and take that makes Eddie feel like he swallowed a spinning top. His belly does loop de loops, around and around, threatening to tip over and spill. He’s hard and hot and he knows Richie is too. He can feel him, but he wants to _see_ him- not just his cock, but the whole of his body spiraling out of control.

“Can we take these off?” Eddie tugs on his shorts. “I wanna-“

“Uh huh,” Richie grunts, but he thrusts against Eddie twice more. His brain is ahead of his body. “Yeah, baby, we can do that. Can I touch you? I wanna touch you so bad.”

Eddie nods furiously and keeps kissing him while they scramble to get fully naked. “Oh God, please. I‘m going crazy.”

Finally Richie kicks away his underwear. He kneels just below Eddie’s hips, straddling him so that their two erections are neighbors. He’s about as long as Eddie from root to tip, but noticeably thicker, hanging heavily in a way that makes Eddie think of that old photo of steel workers sitting on a skyscraper beam to eat their lunch. _I want to sit on it,_ he thinks, hungrily. Richie’s positioned so that they can touch each other more or less with the same effort as they touch themselves, and Eddie’s hand reaches out naturally.

“It’s big,” he breathes, wrapping around.

Richie does the same to him, stroking his firm hold when Eddie does. They start off slow, like the speed of a handshake, getting to know each other. “What can I say, I eat my vegetables.”

“Will it- _oh shuttup, that sounds so stupid-“_ Eddie stops himself before he can say something dizzingly naive. 

There’s no sneaking past Richie, though. “It’ll _fit_ , if that’s what you’re askin’.” He grins, apple cheeked. He blushes so pretty when he gets going, Eddie has discovered. A splash of pink emerges across his fuzzy chest, too. “If that’s what you want. Better believe it’d be my pleasure, darlin’.”

Eddie speeds up, in answer. _“Richie,”_ he chokes, as he does the same.

“I know, I know,” Richie soothes. He bends down and braces himself so he can kiss Eddie some more. He feeds on his feverish little whines and breathlessly trades him back his patented enthusiasm. “Mmm c’mon, that’s it. That’s so _good._ You got me shakin’ baby, just feel.”

One or both of them is leaking, and Richie’s knuckles drag in the slick on Eddie’s belly. He peeks down between them at all that red, shiny flesh pumping that he was told to think was so detestable and destructive and it’s _not_. It’s not the firey damnation he was taught- _he’s_ the fire, burning and consuming, becoming mightier with each leaping flame of a feeling, each lick into each other’s mouths.

“God, Richie,” Eddie clenches his eyes shut. Every part of him is tensing, tightening to one bright point. _“Ah,_ almost-“

“Let go, honey, let go,” Richie urges, open mouth mashed to Eddie’s cheek. He can no longer coordinate their kiss either, with the state he’s in.

“Oh, _oh guh-God_ ,” Eddie shudders. His sore body arches, flooded only with delight for the first time in days. And it doesn’t stop! Rather than glumly slinking away to clean up, he has Richie with him, kissing him and praising him in a frenzy until he finishes, too. Even after they roll apart from each other and only their elbows overlap, he still feels overwhelmingly present with Richie, like they’re the only real thing in the world.

“Y’all right?” Richie checks. “Put my weight right on you there for a sec.”

Eddie swallows and pushes his hair out of his face. “Uh? I didn’t- didn’t notice. Kind of overwhelmed.”

“Woo, I’ll say.” Richie lets out a slow, satisfied breath as he winds down. “Haven’t had that much fun at the HoJo’s in- _ever!”_

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You don’t have to say that,” he laughs. He’s sure his technique leaves something to be desired, even if he’s more native to the equipment than one of Richie’s old girlfriends.

“Nah! Lotta times, pawin’ around’s just an opening act. Nice to appreciate it as its own event,” Richie sighs. He turns his head then, and lays a warm hand on Eddie’s thigh. “But it’d be okay, you know. If that’s as far as you ever wanna go. We don’t have to do everything- or _anything-”_

“You’re not getting out of it that easy,” says Eddie. He rolls onto his tender side albeit a little inadvisedly, fits himself alongside Richie, and touches the corner of his contented smile. “You gotta know, Richie. I want to do everything with you. _Everything,_ from now on,” he says seriously. He can see by the watery look in Richie’s eye that he understands his meaning as entirely as ever.

Richie’s smile spreads as he gathers Eddie’s fingertips to his lips. “I love you.”

Eddie lays his head on Richie’s chest, even if his ribs have now returned to uncomfortable reality and he’ll have to flop over again in a minute. “I love you, too,” he hums.

After they clean up, they experiment with what configuration of cuddling they can fall asleep to, and settle on some leg tangling and Richie’s hand and nose at Eddie’s shoulder. They sleepily rub their feet together under the covers. The A/C is running too cold, but they’re too tired to get up again to fix it. Still, Eddie can’t seem to close his eyes.

“I wish we could stay here a little longer. Another night,” he says.

Richie snuffles at his shoulder. “If I had packed more than two pairs of pants for this whole past week, I might be tempted to tell Ned to hang it until Monday. But I’m _suffering.”_

“Mmm. You don't have to wear pants for my sake.” Eddie rasps his ankle on Richie’s hairy shin.

 _“Now_ you tell me,” Richie chuckles. “We could come back some time, though- it’s close enough, if you can stand to drive through the desert.”

”It's very hot,” Eddie agrees. Living in this climate will take some getting used to, but he’s already fantasizing about a winter without snow removal. “I really like the stars out here, though. Nothing in the way except mountains... I suppose, if we come back when we’re not exhausted from going cross country, we can actually _do_ Vegas. See some shows. Drink some cheap drinks...” Eddie yawns and doesn’t open his eyes again. “M’not much for gambling, but if you are I can blow on your dice.”

Whatever other clichés people do in Vegas. It’s just too bad the laws here are only lenient to a point.  
  
  
  


-

  
  


Richie doesn’t have time before his meeting to find a spare house key when they arrive in LA. Once he has a chance to freshen up, the best he can do is give Eddie his own. He unwinds it from the ring and folds it into Eddie’s palm as he sits at the edge of the bed. 

“Sorry I dragged you back to my cave with no time to give you a tour of the finger paintings, Bamm-Bamm,” he says. “...Or help you bring in your stuff.” He drops an apologetic kiss on top of Eddie’s head and goes back to getting dressed.

Eddie watches Richie finishing buttoning in the mirror. “That’s okay.”

“Really, you can leave it until tonight if you want, and I’ll help you-“

“Pssh. I can handle a few boxes.”

“Aw no!” Richie frowns into a drawer from which he takes out a flashy pair of socks. “There’s nowhere to put your clothes,” he realizes. He plops down on the bed next to Eddie to pull his socks on, giving the bureau a dirty look for its lack of hospitality. “Put whatever you want in the closet, when I get home tonight I’ll clear out half of this for you.”

Now, Eddie’s been keeping score. He knows that he and Richie already agreed to live together, then dove headlong into a romantic relationship- but this moment still strikes him. Richie wants to share his home, his bed, his keys, and now half of his drawers with Eddie so automatically- as if Eddie has always had the right to be here.

“Half?”

“For now!” Richie slips on one shoe and then the other. “We can always redecorate and get a matching set, or just go ahead and become nudists.”

Eddie laughs as Richie kisses his cheek and then springs to his feet. “Don’t give me ideas.”

“Hold that thought! If I hurry things along I’ll be back in...” Richie glances down at his watch. “Five or six hours? I hope? I’ll tell Ned I got a new kitten back home and he’ll tear half my wardrobe to shreds if I don’t make it back by dinner.”

“I just might.”

With a gleam in his eye, Richie swoops in to kiss him one last time, all but tackling him into the cloud-like bedding. He’s already five whole days late, so Eddie doesn’t feel too precious about wrapping his arms around his neck and keeping him a minute longer.

“Pick out a room. For your home office,” Richie kisses to him. “And help yourself to lunch.”

Eddie grimaces and lays back. “Are any of your groceries still good after a week away?”

Richie pulls a face. “Amendment: do not poison yourself while I’m gone! I’ve got biiiig plans for you.”

“I’ll say.”

“Oh that’s right, you’ve _seen_ it,” Richie grins.

They both chuckle into one more quick kiss.

“Go!” Eddie shoos him.

“All right, all right,” Richie heaves up off the bed again. “Shove me out the door why don’t ya.”

Finally he goes, leaving Eddie feeling buzzy and light. He drifts back into the bed with a sigh, the reverse image of Richie wearing all red in a white room burning behind his eyelids.

Hmm.

He sits back up and looks around. White bed. White furniture. White walls and carpet. The whole house is like that, actually. All white linens and blocky structure with only a single vivid pop per room, like if Don Johnson was a house. It’s kind of an odd environment to place Richie in, given the technicolor way Eddie sees him. Maybe they would have fun redecorating. Maybe Eddie is meant to bring back the missing color in his world.

Whatever the aesthetic, Richie’s house has plenty of space for him. Eddie finds a guest room with a phone jack close to the back stairwell that’d do nicely for an office. If he has to have any drivers by, they won’t have to be paraded through the whole house to meet with him, and it’s on the small side anyway. Not the first place Richie would have put a visitor. And the storage space around here? It’s like people out west actually planned for the pack-rat kind. No wonder Richie’s convinced they’ll be safely closeted.

First things first, Eddie brings in all his boxes. He can work on unpacking later when there’s drawer space, but meanwhile he needs the trunk room for a grocery run. He takes a quick survey of the kitchen and finds a phone book and a little pad of notepaper headed with a monogrammed R. Those’ll come in handy. He makes a shopping list, noting the brand of anything that needs to be thrown out, and sets off to find a supermarket.

Eddie gets lunch at the deli counter along with something for dinner. After so many nights on the road at the mercy of whatever the restaurant nearest the highway offered, it’ll be refreshing to have something home cooked. Gauging Richie’s level of comfort in the kitchen should be entertaining, too. Dinner and a show.

When he gets back from shopping, the last thing he has to do before settling in is call Joey. It’s all business at first. As promised, he’s had everything in hand since Eddie left for Derry. That was never in doubt, Joey’s always been a terrific right hand man. It’s just that Eddie had no idea how he’d react to the surprise bundle of paperwork offering him a serious promotion, but as it turns out, the accompanying raise has soothed most of his concerns. They agree it’ll be good for the business in New York to have a sister in LA. So many of their high end clients are already bi-coastal- being able to offer service in both cities will make EK Limos a one-stop shop.

“I think this will be great,” says Joey. “You always had the potential to expand, I’m just surprised it took this long.”

“Well. Opening another branch would mean leaving New York. I could never talk myself into making the break until now,” Eddie admits.

“How’s your mother liking California?”

God, were they really that inseparable that that’s the first assumption? Eddie glances at his new surroundings, unsure of just how much to reveal. He and Joey have always been personable enough to know the gist of each other’s social lives, or lack thereof, but this is another level. Even if he’d suddenly run off across the country with a woman he hadn’t seen in half a lifetime, it’d be a little alarming.

“Well, actually,” Eddie takes the kitchen phone to the neighboring living room, where a curvy divan offers an apropos place to faint, should the need arise. “She’s not here with me. She’s staying in New York.”

“Oh!” Joey says. “You kept saying ‘we’ drove, ‘we’ just got into LA, I thought that’s who you meant.”

Eddie chews his lip. He could still claim the Royal We, but if there must be a bridge between his old life and the future he’s setting out on, he’d prefer it was a little more substantial than a zip line. Even a rickety bridge would do, just in case he ever needs to cross it. Joey will still be someone he knows for years, and he’s been a swell guy, so far.

“Actually, I came out here with an old friend who I’ll be staying with,” he tells him. “Richie.”

“Never hurts to have a friend in town,” Joey says brightly.

“No it doesn’t,” Eddie smiles to himself. “He’s a great guy, great company. It’ll be a good set up and- and a really good change for me. Out here.” That’s about as much as he wants to divulge for now, Eddie thinks, but he definitely feels relieved. If Joey is sympathetic enough he might read between the lines, and that’s fine. His shoulders had been up around his ears but now Eddie relaxes and crosses his legs casually. “It’s gorgeous here, anyway. Like a postcard. Maybe at some point, I can fly you out to train new people for me.”

“Hah! Let’s try and make that happen in the dead of winter. I’ll need it.”

After his call, Eddie sets to unpacking a bit. He makes space in the pantry for his appliances, finds room in the closet for his hangables, and helps himself to one of the nightstands. It happens to be on the left side, where he’s ended up sleeping the past three nights that he’s shared a bed with Richie, so it already feels right. He stacks his To Read pile and Dad’s photo album at the bottom and resolutely ignores the adult contents of the drawer for now.

The last box he deals with is for the bathroom, which leads him to the linen closet. It easily absorbs the things Richie packed up for him, and offers several rainbow colored beach towels in return. Since he’s pretty much sorted out until dinner, Eddie picks one with stripes, grabs a paperback, and heads on down to the pool.

After a lifetime of his line of work, and particularly the last few days of travel, he finds himself particularly gripped by a scene about people trapped in a car. This author does a great job of capturing the feel of New England and its people, so much so, that Eddie isn't the least surprised to see in his blurb that he's also from Maine. Eddie immerses himself at the edge of the pool, lazily kicking his legs in the water until he hears Richie whistling from inside the house.

He pops out on the balcony that looks down over the pool. “Aha! There you are!”

Eddie visors his eyes with his hand to look up towards him and the low hung sun. “Who let you in? This is a private residence!”

“Your puny mortal safeguards are no match against the powerful magic called _The Spare Key of Glooove Bahks!_ ” He jingles a key ring in each hand for mystical effect. “I’ll be right down!” Just as quickly, Richie disappears.

While he makes his way downstairs, Eddie finishes his paragraph and dog ears his page. To his surprise, when Richie reemerges, he’s made a costume quick change. Or maybe that shouldn’t be surprising, given his background. To suit the scene, he’s got on sunglasses and a pair of swim trunks that match the palms lining the patio.

“How was your meeting?” Eddie calls to him as he approaches.

Richie nods over his shoulder. “Oh Ned’s pissed I bailed on Carson. He’s out for blood. I saw a couple ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ posters on my way home.”

Eddie grins. “You can lay low here, Butch, I won’t squeal.”

“Well, thanks kid. I won’t be any trouble, I-” Richie twitches to check over his shoulder again, then jumps in alarm. “Oh no! They’ve caught me!” He points off at his imaginary pursuer, then staggers. _“Bang bang bang!”_

“So much for no trouble,” Eddie giggles as he takes the rain of imaginary bullets.

 _“Aiieee!!”_ Richie drops into the pool sideways, causing a great, smacking splash that flies all the way to where Eddie sits.

“Hey!”

When Richie resurfaces he’s lost his sunglasses, so he dives back down again to rescue them, then wades over to Eddie, dripping water and self-satisfaction. “You gonna come join me in the stock pot, Spaghetti Man?”

Eddie gestures to his own impromptu attire, a button down and boxer shorts. “I didn’t think to pack trunks.”

“That’s baloney!” Richie says, finally reaching Eddie’s hanging knees. He centers himself between them at the edge of the pool and wraps his wet arms around Eddie before he can object. “You can wear whatever you want in here! This pool belongs to _me,”_ he says, imperiously.

It is nice to belong to Richie, isn’t it?

“All right, all right,” Eddie sighs and starts unbuttoning his increasingly sodden shirt, but Richie doesn’t give him the chance.

“Alley-oop!” Richie drags him over the edge and into his arms.

The shock of cool water makes Eddie gasp, but at least he doesn’t go any deeper than the shoulder. He clambers around Richie as bubbles of trapped air race up through his clothes and pop on the surface. “Oh!” he shivers, but Richie warms him with a kiss.

He laughs as he pulls back. “And how was your afternoon, my darlin’?”

Eddie lets go from around Richie’s neck to take off his glasses and finish unbuttoning his shirt. The damage is done, but the drag of the material underwater just isn’t worth it. And he wants to _feel_ Richie.

“Well, let’s see... I staked a claim on a side of the bed.”

“Saw that.”

“Made a grocery run.”

“You did?” Richie sounds touched.

“Mhmm. And I picked an office. That small room by the stairs?”

“I think that was a maid’s room when this place was first built,” Richie nods. “We’ll see about getting you your own phone line on Monday.”

“Oh, there’s no rush. It’ll be awhile before I get to the point where anyone’s calling me. I’ll have at least a month of legwork just figuring out the city before I look at buying any cars or premises,” Eddie explains, peeling out of his sleeves. He wads up his shirt and chucks it onto the patio with a squish. “I’ve got a lot of research to do.”

“Well I hope you’ll take a few days to relax, let me pamper you a bit...” Richie sinks to his chin and drifts up to Eddie, who backs up. They enter a little game of chase.

“Yeah? What’ve you got in mind?”

“I’ve got a few calls to make, but I’m not going anywhere the next three days. We could get some schmancy eats. See the sights. Go shopping. Get you a dresser.”

“I could stand to round out my wardrobe,” Eddie considers.

“Sure, sure. No trunks, though.”

“Thought you said I could wear anything!” Eddie kicks away with a back stroke, letting his head fall back into the water. He lets the motion carry him along and then just floats idly. The weightlessness feels fantastic after a week of having a cramped, uncomfortable back.

Richie catches up to him, scooping Eddie into his arms, bridal style. _“Nothing_ is an acceptable anything,” he grins.

“...Maybe after dinner,” Eddie smirks.

“Mmm. How about we grill?”

The back patio is so huge, Eddie hadn’t noticed a grill yet, but that works perfectly with his plans. “I happened to buy some sausage today.”

“Well then, we got a party!”

While Richie fires things up, Eddie wraps up in his towel and shimmies out of his shorts. He lays his wet things over a deck chair and then meets Richie in the kitchen for some prep. Richie assesses the vegetables he brought home and gets right to it, slicing and dicing for skewers. He’s even got a pineapple out.

“You wanna break out that spaceship of a blender of yours and make something happen with the hootch hutch?”

“Sure!”

One grilled dinner and a very tall piña colada later, Eddie has confidence to spare. He gives Richie an eyeful as he drops his towel to slip back into the pool.

“Woah baby! Hubba hubba.” Richie slaps a wet hand to his chest, miming his beating heart, _ba bump, ba bump._

“I’m making do,” Eddie says airily. He hisses at the renewed chill of the pool as he dips back in, nude.

“Yeah,” Richie says, eyes wide now that it's getting darker and he’s dispensed with his sunglasses. “Makin’ me do about zero to sixty.”

They meet each other in the water, Eddie grateful for some shared body heat, and Richie only too willing to heat things up. They make out in a shallow corner of the pool until the timed lights come on, below the surface. It paints the walls around them in a waving blue that feels a bit like falling into Richie’s eyes. He watches Eddie bat away the pool float that’s drifted into their private territory like he’s never seen anything so beautiful as a man terrorized by an inflatable Godzilla.

“Stop bumping into me!” Eddie shoves it, but it tailspins back at him. “I mean it!”

“Aw, ol' Blanche may be a tramp, but she never hurt anybody!” Richie chuckles.

He goes ahead and tows the thing away and nudges it up, out of the pool. He pauses there with his arms up along the edge and waits for Eddie to come to him so they can resume. In the water, Eddie can easily lock his legs around Richie’s waist and keep them impossibly close. He goes to do this again and Richie licks his lips.

“You wanna try something?” he asks.

Instantly, Eddie’s pulse quickens. “In the _pool?”_

“Usually the shower’s a good place for it, but this works.” Richie plunges one hand down to the pocket of his trunks and pulls out one of the little bottles Eddie had seen in the nightstand.

“Oh!” Eddie gulps. “I haven’t uhm- I don’t know- I _want_ to do more. I just-“

Richie wraps a reassuring arm around him. “Just fingers. Just so you can see if you like it.”

“Right! Sure. Right, yeah,” Eddie stammers.

Obviously you don’t just go straight for it. Baby steps.

“Let’s try.”

“Are you sure?” Richie asks. “We could go somewhere else. Or save it for another day.”

“Uh,” Eddie thinks. Maybe the shower or even the bed would be a little more familiar? But then he might lose his nerve between here and there! He tightens his grip around Richie’s waist determinedly. “Here. I want to,” he tells Richie. “I want to make love to you and that’ll be part of it, right?”

Richie nods reassuringly. “It’ll help. It can feel good, too,” he says, and kisses him in encouragement. “You never tried?”

“With my mother constantly in my medicine cabinet and sock drawer?” Eddie glances at the bottle again- _Probe Love Oil._ “You think I could get away with having something like that?”

“I suppose not!” Richie twists away for a minute so he can dry his hand on a nearby towel and spill the contents of the bottle in his hand. “C’mere,” he says, turning back. “Up a little more. Put your arms around my neck.”

Eddie does and descends on Richie, kissing him before he can overthink what’s happening. “Please do it,” he murmurs against Richie’s lips. “I’m ready. I want you.” Then he gasps.

Richie is holding his ass with one firm hand and pushing a finger in with the other.

“No big deal, right?”

It’s bizarre, but not bad. Eddie feels more _aware_ of the fact there’s someone one else’s body part inside him than turned on by it.

“It’s okay,” he decides, neutrally. He can keep kissing Richie, and Richie can keep doing this. It’s no stranger than if there was a price sticker stuck on his forehead.

As they deepen their kiss, exchanging furtive flicks of the tongue, Richie presses further. Then out and in, again and again. “It’s a good idea to do this a little in the shower beforehand,” he says gently. “When you want to have sex.”

“That would be, well, cleaner,” Eddie agrees.

“Correctomundo.” Richie does a little underwater hop to try and hike Eddie a further up on his hips. It makes Eddie’s belly flip. “-And you should try it in bed sometime,” Richie rasps. “When I’m away, and can’t be with you.”

 _“Mmm,"_ Eddie whines. "I’ll miss you.”

“We’ve been attached at the hip, huh?” Richie grins and gives his ass a squeeze.

Eddie moans a little. _“Soon.”_

“I hope so."

They keep kissing and Eddie relaxes into it now as Richie gets a better angle. It’s not quite so distracting as it was when they started. He focuses instead on their breathing, their chests slipping against each other. Richie’s rises and falls just slightly faster than his.

“I can’t wait to treat you right, darlin’, just as soon as you want.”

“I wanna be ready,” Eddie says, imagining and breathing a little quicker. “I waited so long for you. For this.”

He’s glad he did, now. This is magic, the power Richie wields over him. Before it seemed like a lot of fuss about nothing. Sure, he’d had offers- he had two eyes in the right place and lots of money- but any attempt to get to know someone left him either disinterested or derailed by Ma’s constant presence at the margins. He didn’t want something casual, but he didn’t feel like he needed a big screen romance to feel like he was getting the most out of life. It _should_ feel like something happening beyond just your body, he thought, and still thinks. What a waste if your soul isn’t in it, learning someone else's. Making this journey for the first time- with Richie- is revealing to him just how patient his zeal is, how caring his wild abandon can be. He always loved those things about him, but now he knows those traits were perfectly suited to love him back.

“You wanna try another?” Richie asks. “Let’s turn you around.”

They grab their things from the poolside and wade up the incline to a slightly shallower part of the pool. Eddie leans over the edge with his chin pillowed in his arms and towel while Richie repositions behind him. Like this he can go deeper, and when he introduces a second finger, now Eddie _really_ sees the appeal. 

“Oh God, oh, _oh_ , Richie-“

“You like that, buddy?”

“Uh huh! Uhn uhn _ah...”_

Richie chuckles from behind him and keeps doing the swirly-pushy thing he’s doing. It’s like he’s trying to polish a doorbell, and Eddie is in the house wondering why this fool who has a key doesn’t just _come in,_ already. He’s lighting up from the inside out, on the verge of tripping a breaker. Just when he thinks he might black out, Richie presses up against him and slips an arm around Eddie’s chest. The surrounding touch of it grounds him. Richie roams around, feeling the contours with the flat of his hand, pinching the peaks with his fingers, and all the while kissing Eddie’s neck.

“Sweet darlin’. You feel as good as you sound? You’re like music- all your pretty little high notes.” He scrapes his mustache at tender skin and it's like it shoots a spark from one end of Eddie’s spine to the other. Richie must feel it, too. “Think you’re close?” 

_“Yeah.”_ Eddie jerks as Richie’s fingers hit that spot again and cries out.

“Good?”

“Suh- _so_ good.”

“You deserve it,” Richie says, kissing his neck some more. “You deserve so much love, my lovely love.”

By the time Richie’s hand travels down far enough to get a grip on his cock, Eddie could just about cry. On his tiptoes underwater, he can’t quite get the solid footing to help himself, but Richie takes care of him. His tight fist gives that last bit of resistance that Eddie needs in order to have something to break through.

“Richie, please please,” he begs.

Richie gives him more squeeze and pants against his neck. “That’s it, Eddie baby. Why don’tcha come for me? Come for me and I’ll lose it. Stick it between your legs and lose my damn mind.”

“Yeah, _uhn!”_ Eddie feels so good, he wants Richie to feel good too. If he didn’t know how important it was to Richie to plan something special- 

“You’re so close, honey, come on.”

Eddie’s heart squeezes and gasps. “Richie, _I love you so much-”_

“I know, darlin’. Love you something _awful.”_

Eddie sobs into his arms, legs shaking as Richie pumps him through it. It’s like he can feel himself spasming, rearranging inside like a closet, all the way through to his chest. _If they move this over here, and that over there-_ _this place is perfect for the two of them._

He catches his breath in Richie’s arms, never so at home in his body as this moment. “Oh, wow,” he huffs.

Richie kisses his ear, kisses his cheek, laying a path to his lips. “God, you’re like nothing else,” he tells Eddie. “Way you make me feel.”

Eddie twists into an over the shoulder kiss. It’s plunging and hungry- Richie hasn’t had his chance yet. The hard weight of him lays restless against Eddie’s backside.

“Come on,” Eddie kisses him. “Do it like you said. Show me.” He reaches back to Richie and hooks his thumbs into his trunks, pushing down.

“Don’t have to twist my arm about it...” Richie unwraps from Eddie and takes his trunks off then holds Eddie’s hips underwater, tight. “Keep those cute little knees of yours together,” he says.

Eddie moves to do so and when he feels Richie slip in between, tenses his thighs. “That it?”

“Mmm.” Richie purrs. He steadies himself, finding the right angle to rock in and out comfortably. “Oh, you got the stuff dreams are made of, baby.”

Eddie hums, settling back against the edge of the pool again. This particular act is kind of effortless for him, but illuminating. “So, when we're ready... it'll be kind of like this?"

Richie strokes up Eddie’s back and down again, taking grip where they connect. _“Uhn._ Doesn't have to be back to front," he says. "We can do it face to face."

"I guess, yeah."

"How do you imagine it?”

“Gosh...” Eddie shuts his eyes to try and summon it. It’s late enough, and the house is far enough away from the main thoroughfare, he hears only the trickle of the water as Richie moves. “Hmm. We go somewhere quiet. Just me and you.”

“Quiet? No music?” Richie whines.

“It won’t _stay_ quiet. Not with you there.”

“Don’t sell _yourself_ short, kid.”

“It can’t be helped!” Eddie chuckles. "But, I just want to hear us, the first time."

Richie bends to kiss Eddie’s back. “What else?”

“It'd be dark,” says Eddie. “But not so we can’t see each other. Just so that even before you touch me, everything seems so close together.” He liked that about last night.

“Of course I’m gonna touch you,” Richie says, breathy. He’s getting into a rhythm now. “I gotta touch you. And hold you.”

“And you lay me down and cover me...”

 _“Yeah,”_ Richie puffs. “Love having you- _uhn-_ under me. _Ah-_ all mine.”

Okay. This is definitely veering into dirty talk, Eddie’s realizing. Not his strong suit. He bites his lip unsure what to say or how to say it- but Richie already has him bent over and just gave him the most incredible orgasm of his life, _surely_ he can battle past his shyness in service of the moment. He wants Richie to feel catered to.

“And then- you open me up,” he says, focusing on keeping himself tight for Richie. “And you make me _shake,_ it feels so good. Shake until- _oh Richie, hard as you need-_ shake until I beg you to come and take me.”

 _“God,_ yeah, I want to,” Richie grunts. “Oh Eddie...”

“I want you to feel how you made me feel. I want to feel it _with_ you. Inside of me.”

“Oh baby, oh honey, you’re so good-“

Richie hips stutter against him, frantic, and then they stop. The rippling of the water goes quiet and it’s just Richie breathing again. His arms come around Eddie’s chest in a lazy hug and he tucks his chin at Eddie’s shoulder and kisses under his ear, aimlessly, muttering sweet nothings.

"I'm gonna take such good care of you, love you, make you happy-"

"I know, Richie, I know." Eddie straightens up a bit and wraps his arms over Richie’s. His fingers are all pruney while Eddie’s are nearly dry. “Let’s go inside and dry off, hmm?” Eddie pats him.

He rubs at Eddie’s chest and starts thumbing his nipple when he runs into it. “Do we have to get dressed?”

“Not right away,” Eddie concedes with a laugh.

After a thorough rinse and toweling, they reconvene on the sofa in time for _Columbo._ Richie bundles them into a spare comforter and burrows along behind Eddie, full of froggy voiced _‘Just one more thing’_ s and _‘Is that so?’_ s. He pets Eddie’s damp hair back into a shape that’s sure to be a tangled disaster when he wakes up, but that doesn’t matter.

“What do you wanna do tomorrow, Spaghetti Man?”

Eddie thinks, but sleepy as he is, his imaginings are very sedentary. He’s not even up for scouting out a new church for Mass. “A break from spending hours and hours in the car wouldn’t be bad.”

“Oh boy, you said it,” Richie chuckles. “You wanna stay in?”

Warm and content, Eddie huddles down further into their cocoon. “More of this wouldn’t hurt.”  
  
  
  


-

  
  


With no one to object to their laziness except each other, the comforter is still out on the couch in the morning. When they went to bed they figured they'd get more use out of it tomorrow, and they do. They nest together with their cereal bowls and catch some low stakes morning news. Eddie gives up on waiting for a weather report when Richie reminds him there’s approximately one month of rain a year in LA, and August ain’t it.

With clear skies and an empty slate, Eddie goes for a real swim while Richie makes his phone calls. Like so many other things weeded out from his life by his mother, he hasn’t had a chance to do laps since college. Public pools were out of the question, and while Eddie certainly had the land and money to build his own, that would have removed the distance necessary to enjoy himself. This is perfect. He could do this every day! Heck, he was only thinking of getting into running competitively, but maybe he could get a bike too, and go out for triathlons. Just imagine Richie on the sidelines hooting and hollering louder than the megaphones.

In the afternoon they split up the bureau and finish unpacking Eddie’s things. Richie runs a catwalk commentary while deciding which of his outfits he ought to store elsewhere, which to sweet talk Eddie into trying on, and which to put aside to give away. He gets Eddie into one of his silk shirts and feels him up while making a case for a hat rack. He has some very nice felt hats that would make a handsome display and he’d love to see a little more of Richie’s personality shine through in the decor, so Eddie agrees enthusiastically. The hands creeping under his clothes have nothing to do with it!

It turns out there’s a desk in one of the guest rooms, so they spend some time bumping through the hallways, swapping it for the wardrobe in Eddie’s soon-to-be office. That’s not quite so challenging as taking the twin-sized bed out entirely. After some stubbed toes and debate about chucking it over the balcony, they heave it down the twists and turns of the stairs in pieces. The frame can be left in the foyer for when Goodwill can come pick up the donation, for now. The mattress gets flopped down in front of the TV. They drag over the comforter again, and lick their wounds. Richie seems convinced Eddie’s are located near his navel.

He teases Eddie’s shirt apart from his pants and mouths at the soft flesh in between. “If Barbara Eden’s belly button was _this_ cute they woulda had to put it on TV,” he says, peppering kisses.

“That tickles...” Eddie squirms.

Richie looks up his laid out body and twitches his upper lip. “You saying you don’t like a little whisker, bunnylove?”

That’s hard to argue, when- _well._

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re really up to,” Eddie says, narrowing his eyes down at Richie. “I lived through Deep Throat too, you know.”

“Mercy me!” Richie fans himself, scandalized as a debutante.

Eddie pushes up on to his elbows and nudges at Richie to make him roll over and switch places. He’s been thinking about this pretty much since Derry. As soon as he ran into Richie again, all manly and high spirited, he wanted to kiss him all over and siphon some of it for himself. This is just a natural extension of that, isn’t it?

He climbs over Richie and starts on his fly. “I wanted to do this at the Inn. I always had such a crush on you, I couldn’t _believe_ I ran into you again. I don’t know how I got so lucky.”

Eddie presumes there were other old friends about, but let off Ma’s leash for a weekend, he must have been drinking too much. In the blur of his memory he can only pick out Richie, looking cool with his hands in his pockets, leaning in doorways, against chair arms- _always_ leaning. Always looking like he could be pushed right over and into bed. Always focused on Eddie and picking on him... Picking right back up where they left off.

“I kept hoping I’d find some reason to be in your room...”

Richie grins at him. “You wanted to _blow off_ the rest of the weekend? Me too.”

Eddie snorts and stretches up to kiss him. Well, now he’s found himself in Richie’s whole stinkin’ house, with no need for pretense! They’ve been rubbing up on each other on the floor like they could bore a hole down to the garage below. They’re gonna get off one way or another pretty soon, why not this way, now?

He pulls Richie out and strokes him slow while he works his way back down. He kisses under his jaw and down his unbuttoned shirt sloppy enough to get the sweat salted taste of him all over his lips and chin.

“Tell me if I should do it different. Or like. If I’m wasting your time. We can do something else.”

Richie rumbles beneath him, rolling each vertebrae in order to get in prime position. “You’re gonna do great, buddy, take your time. I got all the time in the world for you.”

Eddie follows the trail of hair down Richie’s stomach, from where it feels silky under his tongue to where it becomes more wiry, trapping the warm musk of him. He stops his hand stroking Richie and cups his cock to his mouth, open and wet. He kisses up the length of it, dabbing his tongue as he goes. When he gets to the head he swirls there, relishing the way Richie groans, and doing it again.

“Oh so you’re a pole shark, huh? Been hustling me this whole time?”

Eddie snickers and rewraps his hand so he can give Richie a few tugs. Much as he likes the puns, he’s hoping he can make him too insensible to string together a joke before long.

When he’s made the tip wet enough to drip down to his fingers he closes his lips around Richie to suck him clean, like getting the last taste of a sticky treat off his fingertips.

 _“God yeah,_ put it in. Oh darlin’, your sweet mouth...”

Eddie hums on him and sucks down again. It's incredible, the sympathetic effect this has on him. He was aroused to begin with from their necking, but now it’s like he’s being strangled by his own pants. He slips his off hand down to rub himself while he works on Richie.

Of course he notices. “Can’t help yourself, huh?” Richie’s hands reach to him, landing on his shoulders and tracing up his neck. “You like this, Eddie? _I_ like this. God you’re a natural.”

Eddie’s just doing what he thinks would feel good if it was Richie doing it to him. He only has himself to thank for inspiring Eddie’s performance. He buries his fingers in Eddie’s hair and follows the nod of his head without pushing or pulling. The real struggle seems to be keeping his hips in check. As Eddie gets more sure of himself, he squeezes Richie harder, more rapidly, and he bucks. It’s a little chokey, the way he suddenly fills more of Eddie’s mouth than expected, but mostly it just eggs Eddie on. He loves Richie loving this. He wants him to feel so good he gets lost in Eddie’s care. If he needs to he can always reposition their legs so he’s kneeling on the outside of Richie’s, to pin him down.

Then Richie yelps at a down stroke and spreads his legs wider and Eddie is glad he’s right where he is.

“Oh, baby,” Richie pants. “Would you give me a finger? Just give it a little suck and put it in?”

Eddie stops rubbing himself and pops off his mouth. He licks his lips. “Are you close?” He can’t imagine Richie isn’t flying at least as high as he is right now, and he’s about ready to trash his shorts. 

Richie watches him slather his finger with his tongue and wets his lips with his own. “About to be. Hhh, _yeah._ Deep as you can go. Then- _ah,_ then hook up- _ah-“_

Eddie can see the shock ripple through Richie’s whole body, belly first, when he presses on him inside. “Oh my God, Richie-“

“Just like that, you- you got it.”

“I’ll make you feel so good, Richie.” 

“Yeah, _oh yeah,_ you will.”

Eddie leans back down to put his mouth on him again. It’s like some kind of perfect circle, having a part of Richie in him, and a bit of himself in Richie. No waste of energy. He feels Richie writhe for him and gives back for every twitch with renewed vigor.

“Little faster,” Richie pleads. “Jerk me a little- oh. Oh Eddie baby, watch out, watch out,” he says, fluttering his hands at Eddie’s head. “Oh you’re gonna make me come, darlin’, _hhhn!”_

Eddie gets the first bitter taste of it on his tongue and pulls off, surprised. “Oh my God-“

“God, yeah, _uhhn,”_ Richie cries as he spurts. It arcs from where Eddie is still strenuously working his hand on him to his quaking stomach, falling in glistening stripes.

“Holy- that’s-“

Well, it’s a lot of physical evidence to be confronted with that he can be a good lover to Richie- not that he doubted his desire to be- but also it’s a _gorgeous_ sight. His own cock throbs hard between his legs like it will throw a fit if it isn’t allowed to come out and play with its friend. As soon as he’s done wringing the last of Richie’s orgasm, his hands are at his own pants, shoving them down to his knees as fast as he can.

“God, Eddie, you did so good.” Richie blows a hard breath and draws a new one back in, winded. He’s flushed red all across his handsome face and chest and slightly dewy. He absently brushes his fingers through the wet on his stomach and then glances at it on his fingertips.

It's on Eddie’s hand too, tacking his fingers together as he touches himself. “Richie, you’re _so much, so so much, I can’t-“_

What is that? Is that a thing to say? Eddie doesn’t know what he’s saying, he’s so far around the bend.

“Please, please finish on me-“

 _“Guh,_ Richie! I’m gonna. God, you look so perfect. I wanna make you perfect like- like this forever.”

“Please, honey, let me have it, c’mon!”

“I- I’m- _just-“_

Eddie clenches his teeth and pulls himself feverishly. He props his other hand by Richie’s shoulder and lowers himself to kiss him while he crests on sensation. He moans into Richie’s mouth as he comes, then collapses in their combined mess.

“Jesus, you’re a hot little number,” Richie puffs, catching him. He wraps his arms around Eddie’s body and mushes kisses to his hair and brow. “I don’t know how I’m not melting like a wicked witch, right now. _Eh he he he!”_

Eddie’s chin bounces on Richie’s chest as he cackles. He turns his face to kiss his breastbone. “Someone _should_ throw a bucket of water on you. Cool you off.”

“Haven’t we put this poor mattress through enough?”

Eddie snorts. “Get out while you still can!” he tells the mattress.

“It’s too late for me!” Richie cries melodramatically. “But you can still save yourself!”

Eddie chuckles and tips his head back up to look at Richie, playing dead with his tongue stuck out. “Any last wishes?” 

“What’s the point?” Richie smiles. “All my other ones came true.”

  
  


-  
  
  
  


Eddie is having a lovely dream about a stage play starring only butterflies when he wakes to the sound of Richie singing in the shower. Also lovely. He pries the bathroom door open as quietly as he can so as not to disturb this command performance.

The room is so steamy, there’s only so much wiping the mirror will do, but he clears a little heart shaped window for himself. His torso is only a little yellowed now, healing nicely, and the stitch in his side he thought might be a rib is long gone. Probably he just sat funny in the car. 

He leaves his pajamas on the floor piled with Richie’s and sneaks up to the shower.

_“Hold me in your hands like a buncha flowers, set me movin' to your sweetest song-“_

“Curtain’s in ten minutes, Ms. Simon.”

The fogged glass door of the shower immediately slides open. Richie peeks through the gap, eyes crinkling. He knows it's Eddie, of course, but he still hasn’t put his contacts in. “Well, _hello_ there,” he says, scanning Eddie up and down. When he sees that he’s unclothed, he flourishes his wrist and offers Eddie a hand like a gentleman.

Eddie steps in and slides the door closed behind. “Good morning,” he kisses Richie. He gets caught in the spray a bit, but that’s all right.

“G’morning sunshine.” Richie slings his wet arms around Eddie and runs a hand over his bottom. “Sleep well?”

“Mhmm. I feel terrific.”

“I’ll say,” Richie grins with a squeeze. “Do you feel like you might be up for a drive, today?”

A full day’s break from the car has made Eddie amenable, within reason. “How long?” he asks.

“About two hours. No more than three.”

So not back to Vegas. Hmm. He doesn’t want to ask too many questions if Richie is trying to do something to surprise him, and Richie’s not so assuming that he won’t ask Eddie’s opinion if it's warranted.

“Should I be packing a bag?”

Richie bows his head to Eddie’s neck and smears the shower droplets that have landed there with his mouth. “Anything you’d want for a little hiking and an overnight.”

Eddie feels a tide of heat wash over him. That’ll mean getting out of the city to some place pretty and quiet. Tonight’s the night, isn’t it?

“Do I need boots?” Eddie gulps. “I don’t have anything except rain boots.”

“Sneakers will do.”

“Should I bring a jacket?”

“Better to have it and not want it, right?”

Eddie bites his lip and catches Richie’s face in both hands to look him in the eye.

“Is there anything else I should bring? Or that I should- should know?”

Richie tilts his forehead to Eddie’s. “Just that I love you no matter what.”

Richie packs the car while Eddie showers and does his hair, so there’s no knowing what sort of goodies he’s stowed for their little get away. Since there’s to be some outdoorsy element, Eddie decides on wearing some khakis and a sweatshirt that layers nicely. He only has two brown belts, but he consciously selects the least finicky one to undo.

He mills about in the kitchen after getting dressed, unsure what else to do while Richie makes a quick call. Half a bunch of grapes disappear before he knows it. Maybe he ought to find a palm frond to fan himself with and recline on the divan and _really_ lean into the whole vestal virgin thing.

Richie returns soon enough, telescoping the antenna back into the phone and dropping it back into its cradle with a finite clunk. Then it's time to go!

Getting out of the city is a bit of a chore, but once they get on the highway they’re headed the opposite way of traffic. North, Eddie notes, toward Santa Barbara. He had already figured they weren’t headed across the Mexican border by Richie’s complete lack of Spanish flair this morning, and it’s nice to know he read that hint properly.

The coast is beautiful and vast, with ocean stretching out infinitely on the left, and mountains guarding them on the right. It’s nothing like driving in the east, where all you get are peeks of one or the other, and you have to wind your way through to get anywhere. It’s as straight a shot as can be while still letting nature have a hand. He’ll enjoy making this drive for work, when the occasion arises, and he’ll remember all the funny little anecdotes Richie tells him about the beach houses, and distant oil rigs, and funky homemade signs for strawberry farms they see along the way. They stop at one such fruit stand, of course.

Richie inspects a stack of hand-fruit. “Do you still hate peaches?”

“It was _plums.”_

“I plum forgot!”

“Did you? Or did you just want to set yourself up for that line?” Eddie grins.

Richie picks two peaches from the pile and turns a haughty nose up. “I have no idea what you’re implying. The nerve! The very idea!”

-The way that after all these years he can still predict Eddie’s reaction and plan accordingly. What a marvel to be so understood.

They get lunch by the beach in Santa Barbara, though Richie makes it clear this isn't their destination. They’re not really on a time table, so they jostle their way down State Street and dip into a few shops, too. In pursuit of checking out the public beach, Eddie finally buys some board shorts at a surf shop, despite Richie’s passionate lobbying for a speedo.

Richie's not too put out, though. He gets his kicks in when they park somewhere shady and pile into the backseat to change.

“I’m realizing I could have used the dressing room at the shop,” Eddie sighs as he wriggles out of his pants. 

“What fun would that be?” Richie cheeks. He tosses both his sneakers into the front seat without even looking.

Eddie is doing his best to keep his privates out of sight of any passersby with his shirttails, but Richie lends him some cover, tipping Eddie back along the seat and laying on top of him.

“What are you doing?!”

“Saving you a public indecency rap! I know you’d do the same for me,” Richie winks. He doesn’t get too fresh, though. He kisses Eddie once and then sits back up to finish changing himself.

They spend a few hours acquainting Eddie with the Pacific, with its wavier waters and rough sands. It’s not as pebbly as the north shore Long Island beaches that he’s used to, though, so that hardly bothers him. Once they’re in the water, the differences barely register. All Eddie can see and feel and taste is Richie, splashing around with him and taking every opportunity available for a little horseplay. He gets Eddie up on his shoulders to do a totem pole version of The Swim that puts a nearby gaggle of beachgoers in hysterics when they topple over. That’s kind of hard to pull off a second time with how hard they’re both laughing, and how Eddie would rather hang around Richie’s shoulders than sit there. So they body surf and race each other to the shore, and Richie ‘rescues’ him from several threatening waves, of course, but eventually Eddie gets tired of having to keep his thank you kisses to himself.

They wash up after a particularly good ride, all giggly and too jelly legged to stand up right away. Eddie rolls across the sand, near as he dares to Richie and reaches out to touch his chest just for a moment. Richie catches his hand.

“Should we go?”

Eddie nods. “Five in the car?”

Richie starts getting to his feet, pulling Eddie along with him and gleaming at the offer. “Ten. I got a blanket in the trunk we can put over the backseat.”

Eddie dusts his hands off. “When were you gonna tell me about that?!”

“After I got a free show, of course!”

They rub off what sand they can before getting to the car and the rest will just have to vacuumed from Richie’s backseat another day. Their feet scrub together as they touch and whisper beneath their woven canopy.

_One kiss. Two._

“Mmm, Eddie you smell like a coconut cream pie,” Richie says, getting a whiff of whatever lotion still clings to Eddie’s body as tight as he does.

“And you love a pie gag, I’ll bet.”

“Whatchu wanna bet?”

Eddie shushes him. They’re ready pushing their luck, in broad daylight.

_Three. Four. Five._

"What're _you_ looking at?"

“Were you always this blond or is the California sun working overtime?”

Eddie has no way of knowing without a mirror.

_Six. Seven._

“You’re definitely extra freckly, today.” He kisses Richie on each speckled cheek. His skin feels extra smooth, buffeted by the sand.

_Eight. Nine._

“Why don’t we go some place we can strip down and get a full count?”

Eddie keens into the tenth kiss. _“Please.”_

North of Santa Barbara they take a turn into a mountain pass, and climb up through the woods. Before long they come to a lake and Richie starts concentrating on the tiny, overgrown road signs. The one he finally turns on to is steep and little more than a dirt path.

“I suppose this is where the ‘little bit of hiking’ comes in?” Eddie guesses.

Richie stops the car and starts fishing around Eddie’s feet for his shoes. “It’s not far,” he laughs. “There’s just not a road yet, and there’s no indoor shower, and the electrical situation is- well, I don’t want to spoil _all_ the surprises!”

“Did you take me to an abandoned shack?” Eddie peers out through the trees to try and get confirmation.

Richie drops his voice a register or two. _“Where there will be no one to hear you scream.”_

Eddie laughs. “How romantic.” 

It’s perfectly nice, of course. Richie just loves a little drama. He points out the 4000 watt generator and the outdoor shower as they wind around the back of the hill the cabin is built on with all his usual showmanship. The front is the real pièce de résistance. The timbers at the foot of the cabin stretch out, beyond the face of the hill to support a wide porch overlooking the lake hundreds of feet below. To take advantage of the view, the wall of the cabin facing the lake is all window, from floor to ceiling. They stand on the porch with Richie’s arm around his shoulder. It really is stunning.

“If you liked Vegas, this place at night’ll really flip your lid.” It’s still a while to sunset, but Richie gestures to the west. “No city light, just the stars and the moon and the shine on the lake... If we hop down to town for dinner, we may not even have to fire up the generator.”

“But you do _know_ how to start the generator, right?”

Richie takes a hesitant breath. “I was counting on your mechanical expertise coming in handy...”

_“Richie.”_

_“Eddie,”_ Richie parrots back in the same tone. “Nah, I’ve been up here before! My Maine away from Maine when I pine for the pines, minus the snow.”

“That’s perfect,” Eddie sighs admiringly. There’s still a proper forest to escape to in the land of palm trees.

The arm around him squeezes. “Keep that energy and let’s take a look inside.”

Richie steers him through the door, and now he sees the burst of color within. _Oh, here you are,_ Eddie thinks as he steps in. This is clearly where everything from Richie’s hippie years went into retirement when he adapted to the posh culture of Hollywood. There’s nowhere for the eye to rest among all the knickknacks and funky art. Simply put, it is _too much._ All the windows are curtained with embroidered and mirrored Indian textiles, and there are several huge pillows piled at the foot of the quilted bed, all made from old flour sack cloth. The wooden walls and floor are all stained a rich cherry, and no piece of furniture matches any other, though each is exquisite on its own. Temple bells and wild blown glass shapes hang all about and the shaggiest rug imaginable crushes under foot, latched in the same amber and wine colors as the huge bouquet of summer lilies that lay on the table.

“I don’t take anyone up here,” Richie starts to ramble. “It’s kind of a mess and like I said, there’s the utilities... Actually, this is where I used to hide out between houses and marriages and the houses I sacrificed _to_ those marriages, and-”

“Richie, I _love_ it,” Eddie says. He feels like he just stepped not into their love nest, but Richie’s very heart. He gathers up the flowers and gives them a sniff, sweet in the midst of the slightly spiced air of the cabin. “I like your house- it’s airy and clean, and all that- but this! It’s scrappy and cluttered and it's _you.”_

Richie’s eyebrows meet in a vulnerable peak and stay there longer than he typically allows. “Yeah.” He clears his throat and crosses over to circle Eddie in his arms like his own bouquet, “Listen, Eddie... I know you’re letting me share something special for you. And maybe it seems like I’ve seen it all before,” he laughs a little with a shrug. “Maybe I have! But I never let it go both ways. I haven’t let anyone, barely even _myself_ be with the real me in a long time.” He looks down at Eddie very seriously. “I know you’re there. You _started_ there, and- and you _see_ the parts I try to keep behind the curtain and you love them, and I just want you to know. This is special for me, too.”

Eddie puts aside his flowers and stretches up to kiss Richie, starting with the space between those tell-all eyebrows. He won’t take their knack for understanding each other for granted just because they’ve been at it for so long. When he gets to his mouth, Richie kisses him back with grateful and tender noises.

“You really don’t mind it? The shower thing is totally a hassle, I know, I know...”

Eddie puts that to rest with another kiss. 

“Good luck dragging me back to LA tomorrow. I just hope you have flashlights or candles or something.”

“Oh, _there are_ candles.”

“For your cult! How could I forget?” Eddie smirks.

“-They’re in the trunk. I woulda had them lit and ready to go- I got a gal in Solvang to deliver the flowers this morning- but I had no idea when we’d be sick of the beach and I didn’t want to wind up on Smokey’s shit list. That bear has connections.”

Eddie knows he isn’t going to want to leave for dinner once they settle in, so they agree to freshen up and get ready to go out. While Eddie experiments in the outdoor shower, Richie goes ahead and starts the generator so he can re-chill the champagne he packed in a cooler along with some things for breakfast. When Eddie comes back inside to get dressed, Richie’s put the candles out too, in charming little clusters.

After they get back in from dinner he goes around lighting them, mumbling _Are ya one, are ya two?_ as though he’s preparing an enormous birthday cake. They’re aglow in time for sunset, burning orange in the midst of the rapidly purpling sky.

It seems a waste to be indoors while the colors change and the stars come out, so they split their bottle of champagne on the porch. Richie hums a bunch of dusty old tunes he can barely remember the words to, that were made to be bumbled- _shoo_ _doo shooby doo, sha bop sha bop,_ and so on. Eddie keeps one hand clutched around his glass and the other at the back of Richie’s neck as they slow dance in untidy loops. Neither’s used to following, but Eddie’s so happy from his head down to his toes, he doesn’t mind them getting stepped on now and then.

When there’s a moment where both their glasses are empty, Richie takes both in one hand and gives Eddie a concluding twirl.

“Can I pour you another?”

Eddie shakes his head and doesn’t unhook their hands to let him go. “No, thank you,” he says, looking at Richie so fixedly, he must feel the temperature go up a few degrees.

“Can I put these down or are we gonna go for it right here?” Richie grins.

Eddie is already walking backwards, towing him to the cabin door. He doesn’t _hear_ glass shattering, but he certainly doesn’t give Richie much leeway to put things down before yanking him the short way across the floor to the bed. He pulls off his shirt and sweater as one, still tubed together, before Richie can even find his first button. He starts on his shoes and socks while Richie provides race commentary.

“And they’re off!” He sounds exactly like an old newsreel, with fast patter and the phoney made up accent. “It’s Kaspbrak, busting out the gate! Taking the lead! His ridah said he’d nevah seen such spirit in a first time contendah!”

Eddie kicks a shoe aside. “My racehorse name is just ‘Kaspbrak’? You can do better than that.”

“Gold and Bold,” Richie amends as he strips, still crooning.

“That’s better.”

“Bettah Than Gold! Gold and Gorgeous! The Golden Buck! Gold and _buck naked in my bed-“_

Eddie snickers and climbs back on his hands to give Richie the room to kneel in with him. After he undresses, he darts over to his bag for a few provisions and drops them on the corner of the bed before finally coming aboard. His large frame silhouettes in the shadowy blue of night sky as he climbs along top of Eddie.

“Hello darlin’,” he coos, settling against him.

“My love,” Eddie greets him. He pets Richie’s hair back and cranes up for a kiss.

Neither of them shampooed before dinner, so he still smells beachy and earthy. Eddie soaks in his presence and splays helplessly when Richie shifts his hips side to side to make their plumping cocks nestle together. Eddie feels so hot between the legs, there’s a split second instinct like he should warn for a just-used kettle, but it shrinks in the face of the towering desire to be touched. _There_. By _him. Now._ Richie nips at Eddie’s lip, opening more and more, licks it wet, and then slips inside. He tastes the backs of Eddie’s teeth and the tip of his tongue and then his moan as they press together. 

Richie’s tanned chest is hot to the touch under Eddie’s hands, still retaining extra heat from their day in the sun. Eddie scratches his fingers into his chest hair and follows it down to his waist, soft where it brushes his own. He traces back up and rubs his thumbs in the divot of flesh over his heart. Even in the dark, that ruddy glow Eddie’s so fond of will be here before long. He’s glad he put on enough sunscreen that it’ll still be noticeable after a day at the beach. He’s glad they got to have such a wonderful day, leading up to this. A wonderful week, really. It’s been a sort of accidental honeymoon.

Eddie folds his hands behind Richie’s neck and fiddles with his ring. “Richie-“

“Mmmyeah?”

He looks up at Richie, smiling down on him so reverently. _Why not?_ he thinks. As long as they’ve known each other, their devotion has always been matched. He can’t be that far off base.

“If I had been, you know, saving myself on purpose. Like for- for _marriage,”_ Eddie says, “-It would be with you.”

Richie hovers over him, mouth squirming. In trying to choose between a joke or sentiment, he picks both. “Well, luckily I _am_ already on my knees...”

Eddie’s hands tremble as he pops off his ring. It might not fit, but he still wants to offer it. He wants to _say_ it.

“I would marry you if I could, Richie,” he swears. It could feel empty to promise something they both know they can’t have- like window shopping- but it doesn’t. “I just want to be with you forever.” 

Richie’s eyes flit between the twinkle of the ring and his face, his wry expression softening. “Eddie-”

“-I know it’s not- this isn’t _really_ real. But for me-”

 _“Eddie,”_ Richie repeats, even gentler. “If it’s real for you, it’s real to me. There’s never been anyone or anything that makes me feel as real and as right as you do,” he says. He leans on one elbow and immediately unscrews his own black stoned ring, offering it in return. He holds Eddie’s gaze, steady and sure. “As long as I live, I don’t wanna live it any other way than with you,” he says.

“Richie!”

Eddie sniffs and takes his ring and tries it around his fingers until he finds an unfamiliar fit on his index finger. Unsurprisingly, Richie has the same dilemma. He wiggles to show off his new pinky ring, unable to hold back a giggle. What a pair they make. They lock their re-ringed hands together and Richie pins him to the bed with giddy kisses.

“So that’s a ‘yes’?” Eddie asks. He looks up at Richie, eyes wide.

“That’s a _‘uh huh duh’,”_ Richie laughs, and claims him with another kiss.

They fall back into each other’s arms and bodies, wired with more electricity and excitement than ever before. If he wanted Richie bad enough to forgo another drink on the porch, now he wants him so fiercely he’d give up entire food groups.

“Oh God, I need you,” Eddie heaves, rippling under Richie’s fervent adoration. “Can we start? Already? I feel like- like I’ll explode if we don’t.”

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Richie chuckles. He slides off to Eddie’s side and without looking away reaches back for the little bottle he put on the bed earlier.

Eddie watches Richie twiddle it in his fingers and feels his face flush. “I mean, I guess that’s the _idea,_ but I don’t want to disappoint you...”

“Don’t worry about that! I’m looking out for _you_ first,” Richie says easily. “That’s what’ll make me happy.”

“Even if it’s over in three minutes?”

Richie fixes him with a dark look. “You are underestimating the appeal of your pleasure, darlin’.” He leans into a persuasive kiss, nibbling Eddie’s lip and poking his nose into his dimples until he can’t help but smile.

“God, I love you.”

“Back atcha,” Richie smirks. He takes a breath. “That said. I wanna take you to heaven if you’re ready, angel.”

“Hmphh!” Eddie lunges one last quick kiss.

That’s answer enough for Richie. He pulls back, making space. “On your breadbasket, por favor. That’s it. Get that perky little butt up for me.”

Better at ease, Eddie angles himself expectantly with Richie kneeling one leg between his. “You oughta do exercise videos,” he grins into the pillows.

“They’ll only sell if you’re on the cover, gorgeous.”

“Dressed like this? I dunno...”

 _“Very_ limited release, then. Just one VHS copy, for me.”

“Just for you,” Eddie agrees.

To start, Richie bends low to kiss down his back and Eddie closes his eyes, relaxed. As he drifts lower, Richie rubs circles on one of his cheeks, gripping more and more flesh until he pries him apart. The touch of his slick fingers gives way to a shiver. 

“Mmhh!”

Richie chuckles an apology for the chill and plants a kiss on his side and then he’s _in._ It’s easy going, since Eddie tried this a bit himself while getting ready, but _so_ much better when he can’t predict it. That, and Richie can reach deeper, too.

“You good?”

“Lovely,” Eddie sighs.

“You ready for two?” Richie asks. “We’re working up to three.”

Three is daunting, certainly- but it’s three and then _Richie._ Eddie shuffles a bit on the bed, raising his hips hopefully. With that, Richie sets to coaxing him open. He rubs and kisses his back, then fits two fingertips, shallow as he can. In he goes, incrementally deeper until Eddie feels the back of his other knuckles. He works Eddie over until it’s a conscious effort not to grind into the bed.

“Having fun yet?”

Eddie breathes like the air’s been plungered out of him. “It feels...” Well, it's different than in the pool. There, he felt floaty, and Richie was like an anchor trying to keep him in one place, one sensation. 

“Good?”

 _“Really_ good.”

Here, Eddie feels like the ground being planted. He _is_ the place. Richie is coming to him where he is and taking root. 

He starts spreading his fingers as he moves in and out. “This is a little more business than last time, Eddie. Last time I was trying to get you off-“

Eddie grunts at the stretch. _“God.”_

“Hang in there, honey.”

“Yes, uhnn, _yes-“_

“This time... I want to make it so we can come together,” Richie soothes him. “With my arms around you... Feeling each other... I wanna watch you, darlin’. I want you to feel how much I love you.” He breathes hot at Eddie’s hip and drops another kiss there. “You want that?”

“So much,” Eddie sniffs. He’s starting to well up again.

“You wanna give it a go?”

Richie had distracted him so expertly, he hadn’t noticed how far along they’d gotten. Even though it makes Richie pull away, Eddie twists and pushes up on one elbow. Richie’s been waiting for him, and he doesn’t want either of them to wait anymore. 

“Yeah,” Eddie nods, breathless. _“Absolutely.”_ He beckons Richie to him and lays back.

“I think you’ll prefer this, with the shower being what it is,” Richie says, snatching a condom along the way.

“Okay.”

Eddie trusts Richie’s wisdom. He hadn’t really assumed otherwise, though now that he thinks about it, the idea of doing without is more enticing than he would have dared consider a month ago. Then again, he had _no_ _idea_ he’d ever find someone he wanted to have sex with a month ago, either. He had no idea he’d be in love like he is now, or that he’d been in love all these lonely years.

Richie sheaths himself and kneels his way over, running his hands up Eddie’s thighs and grinning like his face could crack in two. “Once you get used to it-“

Eddie grins back up at him. “-I don’t know if I _want_ to get used to feeling like this.” 

_“Eddie.”_ Richie bends low and kisses him tenderly. _I know what you mean,_ his kiss says.

“Please, let’s start-“

“Yeah.” Richie nuzzles him, then straightens up again. He adds a little more oil using his fingers, then takes hold of himself and one of Eddie’s legs, guiding him to lift. “Like this, until you get a feel for it. Then, however you want, baby.”

Eddie nods without speaking, holding his breath. He feels his cheeks puffing. He feels his fingers bunching the quilt below him, and the little bit of sand left between his toes, and the hot pressure of Richie at his entrance.

“Breathe. Breathe out,” Richie chuckles. “That’s it,” he says, easing in. His cock feels approximately a hundred times bigger than it looks, stretching him all at once, instead of just whatever two directions he spreads his fingers.

“Nnn!” Eddie shuts his eyes.

Richie pauses. “That hurt?”

“Uhm?” They both breathe while Eddie tries to decide. The strain of it ebbs into a exhilarating tingle. “It’s just- it’s all _right there.”_

“You’re doing great, buddy. We’ll get to the good part soon.”

His hands slither across the bedspread, up onto his body, and to his groin. He reaches his fingers down to where he can feel Richie’s and his body joining together. His whole lower half pangs like a giant nerve, but before he knows it, the throb becomes a want more than a warning and he’s clenching his thighs tighter around Richie, trying to lean him in further. 

“More,” Eddie asks, licking his lips. “Give me more.”

Richie unconsciously mirrors him, peeking out his own tongue. “God, you’re beautiful,” he mutters and rocks his hips. “I wanna fill you all the way and kiss you. Get you around my neck and put my mouth on you, and my fingers, and play you like a one-man band.”

Eddie chuckles as much as his shallow breathing will allow. He feels too full to fill his lungs. “Yeah, whatever has a nice beat,” he wheezes.

“Something- something we can dance to,” Richie huffs.

They’re getting closer now, as Richie sinks in. Eddie can reach his shoulders, and then before he knows it they’re chest to chest. Eddie wraps tight around Richie, arms and legs and _yes,_ they’ve gotten to the good part. They mouth at each other while Richie moves in him, slow and deep. He’s so filling, he can’t help but ride that remarkable spot inside of Eddie. Starry eyed, he gasps a word or two on each upswing. _Lord. So good. Richie. My love._

As Richie thrusts, he supplies the rest. “I wanna have you like this-“

“-Forever.”

“All I ever wanted-“

“-You.”

“I feel like I was, _uhn,_ made to go with you, baby.”

“Me too,” Eddie says, squeezing him tight. “Me too.”

Richie pushes in to the hilt and pants in his ear. “We fit so good. You’re like a glove. You take me so good.”

“More.” Eddie slides his hands down to Richie’s ass and urges him on. He pulls him in as he starts to move faster. “God, _more.”_

They smack together in hurried bursts, breaking only to kiss and catch their breath for more. Another half dozen united thrusts, and then they kiss again, with Eddie’s tongue vengefully plundering Richie’s mouth, but it’s still not enough.

“Hold on, darlin’. Hold on to me,” Richie says, snaking an arm under him. Eddie arches his back to allow it. “You can have it exactly how you want. Just hold on.”

Eddie locks his hands together at Richie’s back, and the next thing he knows, they’re rolling together. Without pulling out, Richie shoves the bed hard until they’re flipped, with Eddie on top.

Instantly, the gravity of his own body weighing down seats him deeper on Richie. “Oh God, Oh God-“

“Take a minute, buddy. Breathe,” Richie reminds him. He stays very still except for gentle hands rubbing Eddie’s back.

The heavy ache that had so far been contained in his stomach starts seeping up. It’s not unlike standing too fast after sitting on the ground. Eddie swallows down a gasp, trying to keep his head, but he’s in up to his neck. “God, Richie, it’s so much.”

“Too much?” Richie worries.

“No, no.” Eddie gulps and shakes his head, momentarily rising above the rush. “This is _perfect,”_ he breathes. It’s exactly what he wants, this full body surrender to their love making.

“You’re perfect,” Richie says, tilting his head up. He kisses Eddie’s neck and lolls his tongue against his racing pulse. “Whenever you’re ready, Eddie my love.”

He’s got the leverage now.

“Yeah, oh God, yeah,” Eddie puffs, trying this new position. It makes his spine quake, and now he has the added, sensational strain of keeping from toppling. He rearranges himself, arms around Richie’s neck, and Richie rewraps him, too. With both of them sitting up like this, they can hug and use each other’s bodies for support. Lean on each other, like they will from now on.

They lip some more kisses at each other, but mostly they sigh and whine into each other’s mouths as they seek a new rhythm. Eddie clings, shaking and constantly on the verge, even though he hasn’t had his cock touched at all. Can just this be enough?

Richie undulates with him. “This good for you? This is _great_ for me.”

He hangs his head to press his nose into Eddie’s chest and breathes like he’s trying to keep calm. _Him!_ But he can do that, when he’s doing it for Eddie. He can travel thousands of miles for him, and help him stare down his fears, and love him so unabashedly that it makes up for their late start, too.

“Richie, Richie, you feel so- _so_ good,” Eddie tells him urgently. “Like I’m gonna _die_ if I stop.”

“Don’t stop,” Richie huffs. “Just use me, baby, I’m here for you.”

“Oh God, _Richie-”_

“Uhnff. Hard as you want-”

“I _want_ it-” Eddie pleads. “I wanna come with you so bad-”

Richie shudders. “Almost, baby,” he promises. “We’re almost there.”

Eddie drops his head in determination and bounces on him so eagerly, he can’t feel his arms and legs, just his insides playing musical chairs. This is _it._ He can feel himself pulsing harder and longer than ever and then he bursts.

“Oh, please, oh, _oh, God!_ ” he cries. Blazing pleasure swirls and waves through him, and he sobs into Richie’s neck. 

_“Yeah, darlin’.”_ Richie’s hands fly to the surface of the bed to give him something to push against. He bucks into Eddie, chasing his own release. “Oh, _listen to you_ \- keep going, Eddie,” he mutters to his shoulder. “M’almost with you...”

Eddie keeps slamming his hips to meet Richie, spasming so hard with an aftershock he might never uncurl. “ _Ohhh-”_

 _“Ah!_ Baby- that’s- ha _ah!”_ Richie groans. 

_“Richie...”_

His mouth goes slack against Eddie and he gives a final jerking thrust. His sweaty forehead smears with the buckets pouring out of Eddie. “Oh, _Eddie,”_ he exhales.

Eddie is only vaguely aware of being tipped over onto his side and laid down, because it feels like he’s floating on nothing at all. Richie’s arm around him and his tickling kiss on his cheek are all that there is. He scruffs the hair at the back of Eddie’s head as their breathing slows.

“That was all right, huh?”

Eddie opens his eyes to find Richie’s head across from his on the pillow. He nods and swallows at the dryness in his throat.

“I’ll say. I’ll take another glass now if you’re still offering, and maybe that whole rain barrel I saw outside.”

Richie chuckles a kiss to his forehead and sits up. “I’ll hook you up.”

“Thank you.”

Inside his chest, Eddie’s heart is still speed walking, at the very least. He lays a hand over it to feel and spies Richie’s ring on his finger. That doesn’t help to slow it down, much.

He watches Richie make a circuit of the cabin to shut down for the night. Bathroom, candles, kitchenette. He brings the bottle of champagne and a glass of water back to the bed to give to Eddie, then locates his heap of discarded clothes.

“You want your shorts?” he asks, shimmying his own on.

“Yes please.” Eddie trades him for the drinks.

Richie sits up in his now-established side of the bed and spreads his arm, waiting for Eddie to come fill it. As soon as he’s dressed, Eddie digs into the covers and hauls his exhausted self to Richie’s side.

“I guess I’ve really done it, now.”

“Boy howdy, didja,” Richie grins. He sips directly from the champagne bottle and offers it back to Eddie. “To firsts!”

“Last firsts,” Eddie raises in toast. He swigs what’s left and Richie puts the empty away over the side of the bed. “But I’m sure there’ll be more,” he adds, and lays his head at Richie’s shoulder.

“Sure, we still need to host our first party,” says Richie. “And buy something big together... I’m thinkin’ a boat.”

 _"Eugh,_ no,” Eddie cringes. “So much maintenance.”

Richie beams, anyway. “There we go! That could be another one! Our first fight!”

“We can _rent._ ” Eddie rolls his eyes. “What about- first holidays?”

“Let’s rent a boat for Labor Day!”

“Now you’re talking.” Eddie cuddles in. “What about Halloween?”

“Matching costumes. Starsky and Hutch. Butch and Sundance. Turner and Hooch.”

“Hooch is a dog.”

“Ghhhrrrr!” Richie growls and wrestles him tight.

“Down, boy,” Eddie giggles.

The circle of Richie’s arms relaxes again, and he holds Eddie to him gently, stroking his back. His nose tips into Eddie’s hair, however sweaty he is. “Firsts are pretty great. Primo stuff. But I look forward to the reruns, too,” he says quietly.

So does Eddie.

  
  
  


-

  
  


On their way through Carpinteria they see the hand painted signs for another fruit stand.

“I forgot the cherries!” Eddie realizes. He’d had them in a bowl at breakfast, and he was going to put them back into a bag to bring home, but he must have left it on the counter when Richie sneak attacked him.

Richie doesn’t seem too worried about the prospect of rotting fruit sitting around in his cabin. He keeps drumming the steering wheel. “We’ll just have to come back after the weekend then, won’t we?”

“I was looking forward to making a pie...”

Without asking, Richie changes lanes to get off at the shoulder.

He stands back with the smug satisfaction of a man who knows there are baked goods in his future while Eddie replenishes his fruit supply.

“Thanks, you saved dessert!” Eddie tells the lady who makes his change.

“Much obliged,” Richie salutes her, then he elbows Eddie. It’s a little hard to tell what he’s looking at with sunglasses on but Eddie tracks his line of sight to a cardboard box sitting in the flatbed parked behind the stand. “Hey- what’s the story with those little fuzzballs?”

Eddie squints. He’s not quite tall enough to see into the box at this angle, but they already have plenty of peaches in the car.

“Oh!” The lady turns around and puts a hand on the lip of the box. “The farm cat had kittens.”

“Are they up for grabs?”

“Yeah they’re old enough now!”

Richie pulls his shades down and gives Eddie a look. “Spaghetti Man...”

Now the woman realizes that the box is not labeled on the side facing customers, and turns it around, grinding sand into the bed of the truck.

**FREE TO A GOOD HOME**

_That’s us,_ Eddie thinks. He looks back at Richie, unable to help but return his puppy eyes.

“We would _love_ to take one of these little guys off your hands,” Richie oozes, ushering Eddie around the stand to go take a gander for himself.

“Oh gosh!” Eddie looks down into the heap of jelly bean toes and Muppet parts, tumbling around with each other. He doesn’t really have to think, he just scoops up the lone sandy colored kitten and catches it to his chest. It mews in surprise, but doesn’t mind so much when he gives it’s feather soft body a few pets.

One of it’s legs slips out between Eddie’s fingers and Richie gives the kitten a handshake. “It looks _just_ like the Mary Tyler Moore cat. Big fan of your work,” he tells it. “This is a real honor.”

“Have you had a cat before?” the lady asks.

“No, but I share their love of lasagna,” Richie deadpans.

The lady chuckles. “Well they haven’t had shots or been fixed yet, so you have to promise to take it to the vet, but other than that.” She raises her hands. _Have at it._

“Definitely!” Eddie says. “We’ll take care of-” he spins the cat around, “-her.”

She doesn’t think too hard about that living arrangement, and simply offers Richie the bag of cherries and wishes them well.

“We should keep the windows closed,” Eddie realizes, on their way back to the car. “So she doesn’t jump out.”

“Sure, sure,” Richie agrees, opening the door for him. He leans in once Eddie is seated and kisses his cheek. “Though, I don’t think there’s any of danger of her trying to escape your arms,” he says. “I’m speaking from experience, here.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! If you liked this, check out my many many other IT fics! I've also got a bunch of art @stitchyarts on twitter and tumblr :)


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